This often beguiling piece of computer animation could nonetheless benefit from a gentler touch. The movie centers around a spooky house that literally eats children on Halloween, but it’s not the ingeniously animated house that the filmmakers overdose on. Instead, the throwaway details are where the picture feels too flippant, too coarse, too adult: a snarky baby sitter whose indifference verges on child abuse; a pair of cops who knock our child heroes about in a manner that approaches police brutality. Monster House is scary, all right, but not in the ways you would expect.
