I watched this for the first time in 12 or so years last night, going through some autumnal media up through halloween. I was very pleasantly surprised with the film, which stands in stark contrast to modern 3D animation feature films. It feels like it should be a cult classic and I'm a little surprised that it isn't.

Some highlights:

• It is a horror movie. It's animated and it's a children's movie, but the genre is horror. The director went on to direct the remakes of Poltergeist and Scream that came out in the 2010s.

• It's more intense and has much darker moments than you'd see in 3D animated childrens' feature films these days. There are some legitimately scary and horrifying scenes, even early on in the movie.

• The animation style is distinct — the humans don't have the same overly-round heads with impossibly skinny necks, limbs, and bodies that you usually see in 3D animation now to make the characters look friendly and non-threatening. Instead, everyone has distinct head shapes and facial features, sometimes exaggerated to make the characters look creepier. Take the old man who lives in the titular house, Mr. Nebbercracker, as an example. The way that textiles and certain objects are animated also evokes claymation, likely related to the use of motion-capture to animate the characters.

• The chief antagonist is a house. Though there are some examples of buildings serving as the antagonist in other works (especially in horror!) it's still relatively uncommon, and it's especially uncommon for children's media.

• ACAB