Dir: Eli Roth; Starring: Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Owen Vaccaro, Kyle MacLachlan. Cert 12A, 105 mins.

When you see Eli Roth’s name on the credits, you can usually reasonably expect some cannibalism and skin flaying at the very least. However, the director best-known as one of the high priests of ‘torture porn’ is showing an altogether gentler side in The House With A Clock In Its Walls.

This is a beguiling piece of gothic whimsy more in the spirit of Steven Spielberg (whose Amblin Entertainment helped produce it) than of the usual Roth splatterfests like Cabin Fever and Hostel.

Nothing much here is especially original. The 1950s settings and the storyline, about an 11-year-old kid dealing with bereavement by dabbling in magic, are strangely (and reassuringly) familiar. This is a film that you feel you’ve seen before, even as you watch it for the first time.

The doe-eyed waif Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) could have stepped out of the pages of Charles Dickens... or of Lemony Snicket. Jack Black’s character, the loud and flamboyant uncle who likes to wear kimonos and pull multiple handkerchiefs from his sleeve, is likewise an archetype similar to many other bungling uncles.

He’s a “warlock” who has all the majesty of a cheap conjuror at a children’s party. Cate Blanchett is arguably a little too glamorous to play the spinster-like witch, Florence Zimmerman, who has simmering grief of her own – but she is utterly commanding as always.

The film flits between Lewis’ new life with uncle Jonathan in an Addams family-style haunted house and his misadventures at his new school, where he is picked on because he wears goggles and bow ties and is no good at sport.

Uncle Jonathan’s approach to parenting is unconventional. In his house, there is no bed time, no bath time and no meal time. Lewis can eat chocolate chip cookies whenever he likes. The one rule is that he can’t open the cabinet in the hall.

To do so might risk waking up the dead and bringing back to life Jonathan’s estranged wizard friend, Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan beneath many layers of make-up), who is hatching fiendish plans to push the world back in time and toward oblivion.

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The House with a Clock in Its Walls is adapted from a mystery novel for children by American author, John Bellairs. Thankfully, Roth never allows it to become too soft-centred. He may not spill as much blood as in most of his previous movies but he makes ingenious use of squelchy pumpkin pulp.

Roth also fills the film with sly homages to old Hollywood horror movies and silent films as well as to 50s sci-fi series. The house itself, with its moving furniture and its bric a brac and mannequins which have a life of its own, is one of the major characters in the story.

It takes a while for the film to build momentum but once the characters are introduced and the plot lines are drawn, the pace soon picks up. Jack Black and Cate Blanchett have an easy comic rapport, affectionately bad mouthing one another and trying to steal scenes from under each other’s noses. Roth keeps matters light but still succeeds in giving the audience a few jolts.