Welcome back, goblins and ghouls, to the fourth annual installment of SpookyJawn! Each October, our love of horror fully rises from its slumber and takes over the MovieJawn website for all things spooky! This year, we are looking at ghosts, goblins, ghouls, goths, and grotesqueries, week by week they will march over the falling leaves to leave you with chills, frights, and spooky delights! Read all of the articles here!

by Heidi Krull, Staff Writer

Goblins, hobgoblins, fairies, griffons. These are all vital pieces to the tale The Spiderwick Chronicles tells us. This film was released by Nickelodeon Studios in 2008 and captures the essence of childhood imagination gone wrong. There is more to this film than meets the eye, and it strikes a rare balance between whimsical fantasy and actual, terrifying horror.

The film begins with the Grace family moving into a rundown, podunk Victorian-style house in the middle of nowhere. The twin boys, Jared and Simon, both played by Freddie Highmore (later known for his work in The Good Doctor) are extremely different personality wise. They, of course, have a bratty teenage older sister, Mallory, played by Sarah Bolger. Their parents are separated and Jared is taking it harder than the other two kids. Their first night, Jared uncovers a field guide by Arthur Spiderwick, their supposedly dead great uncle. He immediately feels something off inside the house, and tries to get his family to believe him. The kids are taken on a magical and horrific adventure where they both defeat the forces of goblin evil and find a new love with each other.

I found it intriguing that the broken family subplot was introduced off the bat, but this element made the film feel more grown than Nickelodeon films typically do, and makes the fantasy-horror elements more high stakes. The mother, played by Mary-Louise Parker, is feeling down and out about her separation from her husband and is clearly trying to make the kids happy despite that. As soon as the film began, I understood that there were already toxic patterns in place for each of the characters. Jared, one of the twins, has unchecked anger issues and started to lash out more when their dad left. Simon, the other twin, is overly anti-conflict, and physically freezes up when anyone is arguing. Mallory is a typical older sister character, but the film makes it known that she is more on her mom’s side than her dads, and has deeply hidden residual anger. Because this plot was introduced so soon, it gives the viewer a chance to care about the characters before they end up in a fantastical mess, and it makes all the events and the ending twice more impactful.

Although this is certainly a kids film, there is no denying that the horror elements are there. As soon as Jared uncovers the field guide and breaks its magical seal, things inside and outside the house go awry. Not only are there goblins to contend with, but the goblins all work for the evil Mulgarath, a disgusting ogre who wants to use the field guide to destroy all fairies. Mulgarath is frankly a creature from my nightmares. It is revealed soon after he is introduced that he can shapeshift into essentially anything he wants, and uses these forms to manipulate the three kids. Right at the beginning of the main conflict, Simon steps outside of the protective circle Arthur formed when he was still around, and is grabbed and literally mauled by goblins as they kidnap him. Later on, the kids visit their Aunt Lucinda (Joan Plowright), who is in a sanitarium for alleged mental illness. She informs them that, not only does Mulgarath want to kill everyone and everything including them, but also that she was almost a goblin kidnapping victim as well. This shows us that Mulgarath historically steals kids away from their homes to threaten them and demand the field guide be handed over.

The fact there are multiple horror elements to contend with in The Spiderwick Chronicles impressed me greatly. Yes, there is the horrible big-bad Mulgarath to contend with, but we also need to appreciate the horror of Aunt Lucinda’s story. A major theme of this film is disbelief in magic that leads to disaster, and Aunt Lucinda is the primary example. After she was nearly kidnapped, a group of fairies took Arthur (her father) away from the human world forever because he knew too much about fairies and other creatures. Lucinda spent her life warning people about these dangers because she herself experienced them, but she was essentially punished for that and put into a mental health facility as an older woman. I think this is reflective of what happens to women in the real world, too. So many women have been wrongfully placed in these facilities, their doctors and husbands claiming “hysteria” is the cause, and are mistreated and brutalized. Lucinda is no different to me. Luckily, she got a much happier ending than many real life women have, but the horror of her situation cannot be underplayed.

While sometimes it was difficult to remember that this film is technically for children, there were also moments that reminded me of The Spiderwick Chronicles’ child-like nature. The scenes where the kids are embarking on a new part of their adventure had a very nostalgic essence to them, and brought me back to my own childhood days. The introduction of the more friendly fairies and sprites helped with this, too. The trolls and Mulgarath are the main conflict in the film and therefore take up more screen time, but there was a moment between all that action with Aunt Lucinda and flower fairies that brought a calming presence to the overall tone. There were moments similar to this throughout the film, and what I found interesting about them was that they made me reminisce on being a kid and playing pretend with my friends. Thinking about the kid’s adventure in the film through a random bystander’s eyes made this seem more real; to any normal person seeing the kids run around, they would think they were just playing a really intense game.

The film’s use of different global fairy folktales also brought a sense of wistfulness and wonder. Like any fairy tale plot line in a film, there has to be a healthy level of skepticism displayed by the characters. In real life as well as in film, with skepticism comes true belief. That being said, a variety of cultures have their own fairy folklore that are passed down generation to generation, just with different names and importance. Persian legends refer to fairies as “Peris,” meaning “a creature that comes from the sky,” and Vikings referred to their version as “Feinin,” meaning “fair ones.” Plenty of these stories can be brushed off as simply stories, and most are, but centuries of different fairy tales eventually led to fictional stories being written based on them. I think The Spiderwick Chronicles’ writers were quite clever for tying in these themes and semi-historical tall tales, and it added an extra layer of playfulness that made the energy more balanced. This film encouraged individuality and imagination while also paying homage to the differing fairytales and myths that inspired them.

Watching The Spiderwick Chronicles as an adult was a unique experience, and I can say with my full chest that I have never seen anything like it. At times I felt as helpless as the kids who were being attacked by trolls, but soon after I would be relieved with a scene of joyous childhood wonder. Children’s horror is a market that is not frequently tapped into, and sometimes it can read as overly horrific or overly childish. This film struck a nearly perfect balance between those two tones and had a real life familial element that made the film, ridiculous as it sounds, relatable to the average Joe.