‘The House With A Clock In Its Walls’ Trailer: Eli Roth’s Fantasy Horror Ticks With Jack Black, Cate Blanchett

“Have a look around,” the welcoming, if eccentric, uncle (Jack Black) says to little Lewis, the aviator-goggled 10-year-old at the tick-tick-ticking heart of Eli Roth’s horror fantasy The House with a Clock in Its Walls. “You’re perfectly safe.”

Safe being a relative term, of course, when a purple-tentacled octopus is at the door.

Co-starring Cate Blanchett, The House is based on the children’s classic book by John Bellairs that featured illustrations by the great Edward Gorey. Roth directs from a script by Eric Kripke (creator of Supernatural), and, judging from the trailer, the result looks to be both fresh-looking and in line with Amblin Entertainment’s legacy of the fantastical.

Here’s the logline: The magical adventure tells the spine-tingling tale of 10-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart. But his new town’s sleepy façade jolts to life with a secret world of warlocks and witches when Lewis accidentally awakens the dead.

Co-starring Kyle MacLachlan, Colleen Camp, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Vanessa Anne Williams, Lorenza Izzo and Sunny Suljic, The House is produced by Mythology Entertainment’s Brad Fischer and James Vanderbilt, as well as Kripke. Executive Producers are William Sherak, Tracey Nyberg, Laeta Kalogridis and Mark McNair.

“You’ll see things are quite different here,” says Black to Vaccaro. Check things out for yourself in the trailer above, and a new poster below.

Universal Pictures will release The House with a Clock in Its Walls on September 21.