Universal may be struggling with its near-dead monster universe, but they’re keeping busy spooking the children for now. In the studio’s new gothic horror fantasy, The House With a Clock In Its Walls, a young orphan is sent to live with his uncle in a house full of magical oddities.

Adapted from the John Bellairs’ 1973 classic children’s novel of the same name, the new film comes from Eli Roth. The movie follows 10-year-old orphan Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who moves into the creepy mansion where his uncle (Jack Black) resides, while Cate Blanchett plays a mysterious witchy neighbor. In the trailer Lewis discovers a ticking clock inside the walls – it’s like the PG version of mother! Then things get weird once he awakens the undead across the town.

The first trailer makes The House With a Clock In Its Walls look like every other children’s horror fantasy, a cross between Goosebumps, with Black petty much reprising his R.L. Stine, and Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children. But hopefully Roth and his screenwriter Eric Kripke (creator of Supernatural), and not to mention Amblin, which produced the film, can bring something special to this. At the very least, who can say no to Black and Blanchett having a bit of fun in the horror genre? The House With a Clock In Its Walls hits theaters September 21.

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