Western Animation / Monster House

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Monster House is a 2006 computer animated Horror Comedy film. It was produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, written by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab and Pamela Pettler and directed by Gil Kenan.

The movie focuses on DJ Walters (Mitchel Musso), a boy who is convinced that there's something strange about the house across the street owned by Horace Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), and believes it's alive. When his parents (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard) go away for the weekend, he tries convincing his babysitter Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that there is something wrong about the house. She does not believe him, so DJ enlists the help of his best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) and Jenny (Spencer Locke), a girl selling Halloween candy (and who nearly gets eaten by the house). Together, the three of them try to destroy the monster house, along the way figuring out its secret.

The film also stars Nick Cannon as Lister, Kevin James as Landers and Kathleen Turner as Constance.

This movie provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: The dynamite that finally finishes off Constance, as well as the construction equipment.
• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Both Chowder and DJ attempt this when the house is chasing after them, the former by closing the gate behind him, claiming to be trying to "slow it down", while the latter pushes a single dumpster in its way.
• Adapted Out: In the console versions of the video game, Mr. Nebbercracker doesn't show up in the climax, apparently still in the hospital, but the credits do show that he built a new home for himself. The GBA vesion instead places him inside the house with the main cast.
• Adults Are Useless: With the exception of Mr. Nebbercracker (and, to a degree, Skull), pretty much every grown up in the film is some combination of stupid and oblivious. Granted, an evil house isn't anything they could actually believe.
• All-CGI Cartoon: Motion capture animation stylized in stop-motion. The film goes for a distinctly cartoonish look over the hyper-realistic attempts of the other 4 animated films from Zemeckis' ImageMovers production company from 2004 to 2011 like The Polar Express, Beowulf (2007), and A Christmas Carol (2009).
• The Alcoholic: Bones is actually seen drinking beer and appears to be drunk when he approaches the house.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys:
  • Elizabeth/Zee and Bones. Then again, Elizabeth/Zee isn't exactly a sweetheart herself, so there's not much to complain about. Subverted in the end when she starts going out with the resident nerd, Skull.
  • At one point, Chowder asks DJ if he has any beer, right after pretending to tell his dad on the phone to kiss his "hairy butt" (in order to try and show off for Jenny).
• All There in the Manual: The official website for the movie listed Mr. Nebbercracker's first name as Horace.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese dub has "Seishun no Tobira" by Ikimonogakari as its theme song.
• Animate Inanimate Object: The Mooks in the game consist of various objects in the house that are brought to life to attack the protagonists. These consist of floorboards, chairs, lamps, and televisions. There are also red variants of certain enemies that serve as Elite Mooks.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In a reversed example, Officer Landers lists the crimes he accuses the kids of committing in front of Mr. Nebbercrackers' house starting off with "Littering, loitering, vandalism, vagrancy..." and Lister finishes it with an uncalled "...and TREASON!" which Landers quickly rejects.
• The Atoner: A downplayed example, as Mr. Nebbercracker intentionally acted as a crabby old man to protect the children of the neighbourhood from being severely attacked by his house, but at the end of the movie, he returns all of the toys he stole as Halloween gifts, as well as fixing and returning the tricycle he broke in the beginning of the movie.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the climax, the house detaches from the foundation with tree arms and chases the gang through the neighborhood once it suspects Nebbercracker intends to leave it behind.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Chowder shows signs of having ADD or ADHD. He’s easily distracted, anyway.
• Ax-Crazy: The house. Constance also shows signs of this in life, exhibiting violent paranoia as a result of years of abuse by spectators. At one point even taking a literal axe away from her husband when being egged by a group of children and advancing towards them.
• Babysitter from Hell: Subverted with Zee. Though largely apathetic to DJ, she calls off Bones when he continues harassing her charge, and even gives the kids some Halloween candy (granted, so she didn't have to make them breakfast, but candy is candy!).
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Jenny is a prep-school girl with entrepreneurial skills that are so good, she manages to sell a lot to a very satisfied Zee, who kept trying to shoo her away.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: When DJ corrects Bones on his stuffed rabbit's gender, Bones pretends to make out with the rabbit.
• Berserk Button: Mr. Nebbercracker hates when kids as much as look at his house. Much less if they trespass it for anything. Subverted and that he never really cared, but acted cranky to protect the kids from his house, possessed by his late wife.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Chowder, DJ and Jenny.
• Bookends: The movie begins with Mr. Nebbercracker breaking and confiscating a little girl’s tricycle. It ends with him fixing it and giving it back.
  • Similarly, Chowder kicks off the main plot by missing a shot with his basketball, where it rolls onto Nebbercracker's lawn. When he finally gets the ball back at the end of the film, he goes for another shot which gets the ball stuck between the rim and the backboard.
• Braids of Action: Jenny's hairstyle, which becomes this once she's brought on the adventure.
• Broken Glass Penalty: Chowder guilt trips DJ into retrieving his new ball after it is lost on Nebbercracker's yard.
• Caretaking Is Feminine: Elizabeth (aka Zee) invokes this as D.J.'s babysitter. In the movie, she arrives at D.J.'s house with her hair done up and wearing a nice sweater while saying how much of a good time her and D.J. are going to have. As soon as D.J. says his parents are not there, her sweater comes off to reveal a tattered rock n roll band t-shirt and she undoes her hair. She then proceeds to break a potted plant before telling D.J. that his parents are going to believe her over him.
• Call-Back: When everyone goes to the site where Mr. Nebbercracker's house used to be to retrieve their belongings at the end of the film, how do the main trio knows which item belonged to each kid without asking? It's because DJ has been keeping track of every object Mr. Nebbercracker took from the neighborhood's kids for what is implied to be a long time, as the audience was shown in one of the first scenes.
• Cheating with the Milkman:
  • Chowder's parents. Very subtle.
    DJ: Chowder, where are your parents?
    Chowder: My dad's at the pharmacy and my mom's at the movies with her personal trainer.^note  Though there is no indication to suggest that said personal trainer isn't a friend.
  • What's arguably even more audacious than the above joke itself is how Chowder says it like he's almost resigned to it - his dad knows, his mom knows, and he knows, and he's just "Well, that's just how it is for us." Or that his mom has a habit of doing this.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The explosives Chowder points out.
  • The heavy machinery at the dig site, specifically the excavator and the tower crane.
  • The house's uvula.
• Chekhov's Skill: During the main character's break-in inside the house, a photograph in the house reveals that Mr. Nebbercracker was apparently an engineer during either World War II or The Korean War. This proved instrumental with destroying the house using dynamite during the climax.
• Child Hater: Nebbercracker as part of his Jerkass facade. His wife Constance in life was easily set off by harassment, which we see in the form of children.
• Construction Vehicle Rampage: Construction workers for some unknown reason leave the keys in their construction machines, which allows Chowder to briefly start up an excavator by accident. He later uses it in the climactic fight against the titular, monstrous house with DJ and Jenny accompanying him. DJ also swings on the rope of a tower crane to drop a stick of dynamite into the chimney of the house.
• Construction Zone Calamity: The climactic fight takes place in the construction site.
• Constructive Body Disposal: The house's secret is connected to a body buried in the cement foundation of the basement when it was being constructed. It's Constance Nebbercracker, who lost her footing and fell into the wet cement while attempting to chase off some children.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Nebbercracker had to scare all the children away, or else the house would eat them.
• Date Rape Averted: A lighthearted example. Bones is seen jokingly tackling Zee and trying to make out with her, but she resists and kicks him out of the house, after which he mutters "prude".
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Constance's backstory is that her gigantism resulted in her being paraded in a circus as a freakshow, forced to sleep in a cage, and being abused by the audience. Needless to say, such a concept is unthinkable even in a 2006 movie.
• Demolitions Expert: An old picture shows that Nebbercracker was evidently a former military demoman or combat engineer, which explains why he keeps a crate of dynamite in the house.
• Demonic Possession: The house is possessed by Constance, who was buried alive by cement in the basement.
• Determinator: Even after chasing the kids halfway across the town (presumably), battling an excavator, falling off a cliff, and being destroyed by the fall, the house still won't stop trying to kill them. See One-Winged Angel below.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Both DJ and Chowder get distracted when seeing Jenny from their telescope.
• Dying Town: Implied. The local lake has been drained for a housing development, but the age of the sign indicates that construction has been inactive for a while, meaning the town may be on hard times and unable to fund the project, which the filmmakers point out in the DVD commentary. Still, the machines are functional, so it may be in progress.^note Not helping is that the movie came out in the midst of the U.S. Housing Crisis, and unfinished subdivisions and housing developments were a depressingly common sight for a lot of Americans living in areas hit hard by the bubble burst.
• Egging: While the titular house was under construction, children threw eggs and rocks at it, which caused Constance to try and attack them.
• Eldritch Abomination: The titular house, (aka Constance) and its/her final form.
• Eldritch Location: The titular house. Especially when Constance starts to affect the insides more. Some of the weirder things it can do include looking inward with beams of sunlight to survey the interior of the house, possessing the grounds and objects inside to bring people closer, and making phone calls with no apparent operator.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Jenny first tries to sell Halloween candy to Zee, the latter smugly tells the former that this isn't her house, so it makes little difference if it gets toilet-papered or not. Seeing this, Jenny shrewdly switches tactics and negotiates with her, revealing a remarkable capacity for smart-thinking. Upon making the hard bargain, Zee even shows admiration for her wit.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Zee is apathetic to DJ but can only watch Bones bully him for so long before telling him to lay off and go downstairs with her.
  • Not too long after, Bones makes a bitter remark about how Nebbercracker is evil. Zee begs to differ, thinking "evil" is a strong word for what Nebbercracker is. At worst, she just thinks he's merely a crochety old man.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The events of the movie take place over 2 days, from the evening of October 30th to the night of October 31st (Halloween).
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Neither DJ nor Chowder notice how Mr. Nebbercracker's house (which they know is supposed to be completely vacant now with Nebbercracker loaded in the back of an ambulance and presumed dead) has shut its front door which he left open, nor how the blinds which DJ previously took note of being closed are now open, nor how the chimney has started smoking after Mr. Nebbercracker's collapse.
  • Really, you could assign this to the whole street for never noticing the house come alive, especially with all the racket it makes when it attacks, with special mention going to Nebbercracker's nextdoor neighbors on either side of the house.
• False Reassurance: When DJ accidentally kills his neighbor in a fight (or so he thinks), Chowder reassures him that he's not a murderer - after all, killing someone accidentally is called manslaughter.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Constance falling to her death is one thing, but if that didn't do her in, the wet concrete that fell onto her definitely finished the job.
• Fat and Skinny: A few examples. DJ is a very thin boy while his friend Chowder, while not exactly fat, is somewhat chubby, and then there's the two cops, Landers (fat) and Lister (skinny). And although they don't interact until the end, Skull (fat) and Bones (skinny) used to be in a band together. Horace Nebbercracker is a skinny husband to the rather obese Constance.
• Fattening the Victim: One of the stories going around about Nebbercracker is that he fattened up his wife and ate her. The truth is that Constance was already obese before she met Nebbercracker, and she died in a freak accident during the construction of their house, leaving behind a very heartbroken Nebbercracker.
• Favouritism Flip-Flop:
  DJ: Questions?
  Chowder: Yes, umm, are you nuts?! I don't wanna steal drugs from my father, I don't wanna go inside a monster, and I don't wanna die!
  Jenny: I say it's worth a shot.
  Chowder: Yes, I agree. Let's do it.
• Fictional Video Game: Skull is the champion of the game Thou Art Dead, an arcade game which clearly takes inspiration from Castlevania. Chowder states that Skull once played the game for four days straight on one quarter, a gallon of chocolate milk, and an adult diaper.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Jenny calls DJ and Chowder morons when she first meets them, but she grows to be friends with both of them over the course of the movie, while trying to survive against a man-eating house and destroy it.
• First Kiss: DJ's Motivational Kiss from Jenny also seems to have been his first, much to his joy.
  DJ: "I kissed a girl. I kissed a girl on the lips."
• Foreshadowing:
  • Nebbercracker scares people away from his house with threats like, "Do you want to be eaten alive?!" We later find out he's not kidding: his house really does eat people who get too close to it.
  • Just seconds after Nebbercracker lands on top of DJ, the house already starts coming alive, showcasing a noticeably sad emotion as it shuts its door and begins making a low moan as it produces a fire and smoke comes out from the chimney. The house comes alive right in front of DJ and Chowder when the latter tries to ding-dong ditch on it.
  • DJ has a nightmare about the house, with a giant, sinister arm reaching from the doorway. Said arm is visibly overweight, and the house turns out to be possessed by a former circus fat lady.
  • Bones' remark about how he once saw Nebbercracker kissing the house take on a whole new meaning when one realizes the house is Nebbercracker's wife.
  • The whole joke about Jenny mentioning the house's uvula, with Chowder mishearing it and claiming the house is female.
  • Before he collapses, Nebbercracker is about to call the house "her," depending on how you hear it.
  • Zee's shirt when Jenny is selling candy to her reads "Skull & Bones". Bones is the name of her boyfriend at the start of the film. Skull is the name of the guy she dates at the end.
  • The Monster House wakes up after Nebbercracker breaks his arm and passes out. Cracks appear on the windows to signify that the house is upset, with one on a window slashing across DJ's neck to show its anger at him.
  • Chowder pointing out that no kid in their right mind would be dumb enough to trick-or-treat at Nebbercracker's house, followed by the house blatantly trying to lure him to it with his ball. And earlier, it does that same with Bones and his "Awesome Kite". Which should raise the question: if the house is Mr. Nebbercracker, why does it want people to come to it when all he wanted to do was just keep people away?
• The Freakshow: Constance was trapped in one until she was rescued by Nebbercracker.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: At the very start, parts of the titular house are seen, but they're rather indistinguishable from the rest of the houses. It isn't until the girl stops suddenly that the camera whips past her with most of the house being visible.
• Freudian Excuse: The titular Monster House is possessed, along with the surrounding plot of land, by the angry spirit of Constance, a woman who was mocked her entire life because she was obese and used to be exposed as a circus freak^note probably against her will, or at the very least while being mistreated, as she had to sleep in a cage until Nebbercracker helped her escape. Constance died during a bout of irrational paranoia trying to go after some mischievous kids, and her spirit maintains that psychological warping.
• Geek: Skull. His Establishing Character Moment is playing an arcade game in a pizza place and taking it way too seriously. He’s who the trio ask for advice on taking on the house.
• Geeky Turn-On: Implied at the end, when Zee starts dating Skull.
• Genius Loci: The house, of course.
• Girlish Pigtails: The little girl at the beginning of the film wears these.
• Girls Have Cooties: Subverted. Both DJ and Chowder develop crushes on Jenny the moment they see her.
• Good All Along: Mr. Nebbercracker is not as cantankerous as he initially appears to be. In the end, it was all an act.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: The house can go from calm to extremely angry with minimal provocation. So could the woman possessing it.
• Haunted House: Played with; obviously the house is haunted, but the ghost of Constance is the house. Taken slightly further, too, as the house's grounds can also be manipulated by the spirit.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Invoked. To protect the kids to be eaten and killed by Constance, Nebbercracker acts as an horrible, bitter, grumpy Jerkass so people wouldn't dare to get close to his home, effectively earning himself a bad reputation around the neighborhood just to keep the people safe.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: DJ and Chowder. As much as they like to argue with each other, they have each others backs when push comes to shove.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: Averted. While screaming at DJ to stay off his lawn while holding him in the air, Nebbercracker's heart acts up. Rather than flare dramatically and clutch his chest (which he doesn't get a chance to do because he's holding up DJ), he just freezes up and wheezes before falling unconscious.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Many of the characters bear very good likeness to their voice actors. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Zee is among the best examples while Jason Lee as Bones is among the worst.
• Kid Hero: DJ, Chowder, and Jenny are no older than 13 but are the main protagonists.
• Kids Are Cruel: This could all have been avoided if this wasn't the case with the kids who teased Constance and eventually caused her to fall to her death in the foundation of her new house.
• Kids Driving Cars: In the climax, Chowder is shown to be skillful at operating an excavator enough to bravely fight against the monster house. Lampshaded by Jenny who is riding with him.
  Jenny: How do you know how to drive this thing?
  Chowder: I don't.
• Literally Apoplectic: When Nebbercracker catches DJ and Chowder on his lawn, he gets so upset that he passes out, seemingly from a heart attack. However, he later returns: it turns out he broke his arm when he grabbed DJ's shirt, and the pain made him pass out.
• Living Structure Monster: The titular creature is a monstrous, animate house.
• The Load: For most of the film, Chowder does nothing but screw up and slow DJ and Jenny down.
• Manchild:
  • Skull to a degree, while officer Lister acts very childishly, much to Landers' annoyance.
  • Bones may qualify as well, while his actual age is ambiguous, we're going to assume he's at least 19 or 20. Regardless, he's too old to be harassing kids younger than him.
• Malaproper:
  • After Jenny notes that the house has an uvula, Chowder states that it's a "girl" house. It was even featured in the trailers. Though Jenny was referring to a uvula (the pink flesh thing that hangs at the back of your throat) and not a vulva.
  • The Latin American dub actually went further than the original, with Chowder confusing uvula (being the same word in Spanish) for óvulo (Spanish for egg cell), and then saying that the house is monstruating.
• Miles Gloriosus: Downplayed with Chowder. He has a panic attack when he accidentally starts an excavator after telling DJ to be cool like him. He spends a majority of the movie as a snivelling coward. But when push comes to shove, he’s fighting Constance with the same excavator.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Horace Nebbercracker, who acts angry and crazy towards people but turns out not to be such a bad guy.
• Morality Pet: Nebbercracker is this to Constance. Even when possessing his house, she never tries to harm him until he tries to blow her up with dynamite.
• Motion Capture: How most of the characters were animated. Compared to the other 4 ImageMovers motion capture animated films, this one has a more stylized art style compared to the more hyper realistic style that the other 4 films use.
• Motivational Kiss: At the climax, DJ is faced with the task of climbing up a tower crane and dropping a stick of dynamite down Constance's chimney, destroying her once and for all. When he says that he doesn't think he can do it, Jenny loudly proclaims, "Yes, you can!" before kissing him on the lips.
• Moving Buildings: The house becomes mobile after using the two trees next to it as legs.
• Murphy's Kite: Bones mentions that when he was a kid, Nebbercracker took his kite after it landed at the edge of his lawn.
• Nested Mouths: Normally the titular house has a mouth formed only from it's doorway, but it has the ability to convert the supports of it's porch into an additional, larger mouth.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The funny scene where the house eats the police car whole was different in the movie. Not only were the two cops swallowed separately, but the kids were the only ones inside the car.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Nebbercracker's modus operandi is to terrorize kids away from the house and confiscate their toys to keep them away. This unfortunately allows the house to use the toys as lures and temptations so it can eat more victims.
• Not Quite Dead: Turns out Mr. Nebbercracker didn't die of his heart attack. The worst he got of it was his broken arm.
• Object-Tracking Shot: The leaf at the beginning of the movie.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The way Nebbercracker returns to his house implies he escaped from the hospital by stealing an ambulance.
• Oh, Crap!: A lot.
  • Eliza when Nebbercracker starts yelling at her for accidentally getting on his lawn.
  • DJ when Nebbercracker spots him, trying to get Chowder's basketball of the lawn.
  • Nebbercracker has one when starts to suffer a heart attack while threatening DJ.
  • Bones when he is about to get pulled into the house by his long-lost kite.
  • Chowder when he sees the house come alive in front of him.
  • DJ and Chowder when they see Jenny walking up to Nebbercracker's house.
  • Jenny when she sees the house come to life in her eyes for the first time.
  • Officer Lister when a tree on Nebbercracker's lawn snatches his gun out of his hand.
  • Chowder when when many coils rain down to drag him up from the basement.
  • DJ, Chowder, Jenny and Mr. Nebbercracker when Constance (as a house) becomes enraged by the former's offering to the latter to let her go.
  • Chowder when he sees Constance rebuild herself after the two slide down the empty lakebed.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Constance never forgot the kids that used to tease her.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, since DJ's babysitter Zee and Eliza the tricycle kid are both called Elizabeth.
• One-Winged Angel: The titular house, who turns out to be Constance's vengeful spirit inhabiting it, becomes more and more monstrous the more times it attacks until eventually, she's using two trees in the front yard as legs. After her body is first destroyed, it eventually re-forms into a gigantic, bloodthirsty orb of broken wood spikes with More Teeth than the Osmond Family supported by the same two trees, becoming a Clipped-Wing Angel.
• Operation: Jealousy: It's heavily implied the reason Zee hooks up with Skull is to get back at Bones for his jerkish behavior the previous night.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The house is possessed by a malevolent spirit that eats people who come too close to it...
• Pac-Man Fever: Averted. Uber-nerd Skull is a purported master of Thou Art Dead, an arcade game at the pizza joint he works for. According to a designer on the film, it was heavily inspired by Ghosts 'n Goblins and Castlevania, and made sure to recreate the 16-bit look of games from the period.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • When Zee tells Jenny she's just a babysitter, Jenny decides to "cut the crap" and get straight to business.
  • The Croatian dub translates the word "crap" as "sranje" (and the whole sentence is translated as "Dosta sranja"). In Croatia, the word "sranje" is generally recognized as a strong word closer to "bullshit" (or just "shit") than "crap" - though all three of those translate the same - and as a result we have a case of someone (and a kid, nonetheless) actually saying something that would translate back as "Enough bullshit".
  • Likewise the Italian dub has her mutter "Basta cazzeggiare" which would translate back as "Enough dicking around".
• Police Are Useless: Though, in fairness, there's only two cops in the movie, one of whom has only been on the job for under a week. Oh, and Judy back at the station.
• Porn Stash: Alluded to when DJ and Chowder search the house.
  Chowder: Whoa. Look at all these toys!
  Jenny: This must be where Nebbercracker keeps his stash.
  Chowder: (under his breath) Heh. Stash.
• Product Placement: The people in this movie sure like Mr. Clean.
  • Other notable products in the film are Wilson-branded basketballs (which Chowder owns) and Mountain Dew (bottles of which are strewn across DJ's bedroom).
• Properly Paranoid: Nebbercracker wanted to make sure the children leave his house so that it wouldn't provoke Constance's wrath.
• Rabid Cop: On the one hand, children should learn to respect the law and shouldn't throw stones at people's houses. On the other, threatening to shoot them is going way too far.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: with the two boys, DJ is the serious and smarter blue while Chowder is the impulsive and boisterous red.
• Really Gets Around: When Chowder tells Zee that her boyfriend, Bones, was "eaten alive," she looks off in disbelief and says "Sherry Klausen." before leaving DJ's room.
• Rescue Romance: Constance was originally a carnival attraction that was continuously mocked and ridiculed for being overweight and was kept inside of a cage when not performing. Then after one show, she meets a young Horace Nebbercracker who had fallen in love with her and promised to take her away from the Circus. Constance immediately fell in love with him as he hooked her cage up to his pickup truck to escape into the night together.
• Rescuing the Abused: The flashback reveals that Mister Nebbercracker's wife, Constance, was a woman with gigantism employed/imprisoned at a circus. The circus used her as freak show entertainment, and encouraged people to tease and taunt her. Nebbercracker, however, fell in love with her. One night, he rescued her from the circus. She was so happy that she married him. They planned to have a beautiful life together, even building their own house. Unfortunately, a tragic accident put an end to that...
• Retired Badass: While not much is actually said by the characters, portraits inside of Mr. Nebbercrackers' house show that Horace was originally most likely part of the U.S. Military Demolition Squad involved in The Pacific Theater.
• Rewatch Bonus: After The Reveal, the scene where the house looks outright dejected after Mr. Nebbercracker's heart attack actually resembles a wife's reaction to her husband's unfortunate situation, with a vine trying to pull the stretcher back.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Chowder is indeed right about the spirit possessing the house being a female, but it's not because it has an uvula in its mouth (which he probably heard as "uterus", or possibly "vulva", which is even dirtier).
• Schmuck Bait: The house lures a drunk Bones in with his childhood kite, which drags him into the house. It does the same with Chowder's ball twice, the first time the other two pull him out of it.
• Senior Creep: Mr. Nebbercracker, whom the others don't like due to his scary demeanor and habit of taking everything that ends up on his lawn. However, he's really doing this to protect the neighborhood's residents from his own house.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Played straight when Officers Landers and Lister get eaten by the house. Downplayed by Chowder being present throughout the movie. Even then, his quirky demeanour gives way to terror once they enter the house.
• Shout-Out: Some of the kids at the end of the film are dressed like Luke Skywalker.
  • Another one where, earlier in the film when Officer Lister is interrogating the boys, he asks Chowder "Ya got somethin' to say, Porky? Huh? Dee-ba-dee you?" referencing Porky Pig.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In the end of the film when Zee ditches Bones for the resident nerd Skull. Because he "gives (her) the respect (she) deserves and makes time for (her)."
• Stealth Pun: It is revealed that the house is possessed by the vengeful spirit of Constance, Mr. Nebbercracker's wife. Which makes it a house-wife. Made much clearer when DJ uses the term unironically at the end.
• Stock Audio Clip: One of DJ's screams is an example:
  • He screams when he accidentally crumbles Constance's tomb going close-up to her face.
  • He yells he gets swung around the carpet tongue when he, Chowder and Jenny try to escape the house.
  • When he plummets from the crane a hundred feet high, he makes this scream one more time.
• Stray Ball Plot: For decades, the Grumpy Old Man Horace Nebbercracker has confiscated any toys that stray onto his property, often verbally harassing the children who have lost them. Elizabeth's boyfriend Bones recalls how Nebbercracker stole his kite years ago and DJ's best friend Chowder is upset when he loses his new basketball to Nebbercracker's yard. When DJ attempts to retrieve Chowder's ball he kicks off the main plot of the film.
• Suburban Gothic: The main characters are terrorized by the house across the street, which is alive and malevolent but inactive when adults are around.
• Targeting the Exhaust System: To prevent the house from attacking anyone else, DJ and his friends decide to put out the fire in the chimney (which serves as its beating heart). Though their initial plan of simply sneaking into the monster house to douse the fire with water guns doesn't pan out, they later resort to chucking dynamite down the chimney to make the house explode.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Mr. Nebbercracker and his wife Constance The Giantess.
• Tragic Intangibility: At the end of the movie, the old man briefly sees a ghost of his wife and reaches out to her, only to pass through her body just before she disappears. With their house gone, he has nothing left of his wife.
• Tragic Monster: The house, once we find out it's possessed by Constance, who died in an accident after a psychological issue set her off.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The main trio are this. DJ and Chowder are male and Jenny is female.
• Undeath Always Ends: At the end of the movie, the house is finally destroyed, setting Constance's spirit free.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: There's a BIG, LIVING GODDAMN HOUSE stomping its way through the middle of a suburban neighborhood, and nobody comes out of their house to see what's going on.
• Urine Trouble:
  • A dog pees on a jack-o-lantern, putting out its flame.
  • The house eats a dog the instant it starts peeing on its lawn.
  • The overnight bottles.
• Unstoppable Rage: Constance is not happy about the circumstances of her death and her treatment in life, and she ain't at rest.
• Uvula Escape Route: Soon after the kids sneak into the titular house while it sleeps, Chowder spots a bulbous lantern filled with glowing orbs hanging from the ceiling. He and DJ shoot water guns at it, mistaking it for the house's heart, which they have to destroy in order to kill it. Instead, a huge chasm opens up in the floor and water gushes out, prompting Jenny to realize that the lantern is actually the house's uvula. Not long after this, the house wakes up and tries to swallow them, but Jenny manages to grab the uvula and swing from it, causing a huge gush of water from the house's gullet that washes all three out of the door.
• Villainous Breakdown: After DJ told Horace to let Constance go and set her spirit free, she completely lost it and after uprooting herself with two trees she's using as arms and legs, she goes DJ and the others in an attempt to kill them.
• Walking Spoiler: Anything about Constance's existence is integral to the plot, as she's actually the titular house.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Subverted with everyone eaten by the house, who all appear during the end credits climbing out of what was once the basement.
• Wham Line: Nebbercracker has this response when he returns to his now-animated house:
  Nebbercracker: Honey, I'm home.
• Wham Shot: DJ receives a call from what he assumes is a prank call, so he calls it back... and then it's revealed the sound of a phone ringing is coming from the house.
• When Trees Attack: The house is capable of controlling the trees in its lawn as appendages that attack and grab its victims, and in the ending two trees fuse at the sides of the house in order to become its "legs".
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Constance was forced to be part of a circus as The Freakshow and was mercilessly mocked by the public and seemingly mistreated by the owner of the circus. (She did have to sleep in a cage.) Then she found happiness when Mr. Nebbercracker rescued her and married her, only to fall to her death in the foundation of her house when she tried to chase off a group of kids that were harassing her. Her enraged spirit then became part of the house, unable to leave for the afterlife - essentially remaining trapped in her own home for several decades.
• Writer Behind the Times: The film was released in 2006 but several hints point the setting to the 1980s.
• Yandere: Constance, a.k.a the house. If anyone disrespects her house, trespasses near her or tries to take her husband away, she'll gobble them up.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: After Chowder finally gets back his basketball at the end of the movie, he tries to take another shot at the hoop... and it instantly gets stuck between the rim and the backboard.
• You Have to Believe Me!: DJ says this almost word-for-word as he tells Officer Landers and Officer Lister about the house.