When I was a kid, I always heard bumps in the night and paid close attention to family legends about ghostly shapes wafting through dark rooms. I am convinced to this day that I saw one of those in my own doorway while I cowered into my pillow.

We’ve also all had the experience of small personal items going missing—and feeling, somehow, that it simply wasn’t just a case of misplacing them. No, somewhere within the walls of the house—perhaps in the same place that all those strange creaks and tappings come from—our little trinkets and treasures have been collected by somebody.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is largely founded on such common perceptions of brushes with otherworldly things. In this case, twin brothers Jared and Simon and sister Mallory move into an inherited house with their newly single mother. Almost instantly, Mom and Mallory are on the sulky Jared’s case about absconding with keys and mementos—but Jared knows he’s innocent, and in shorter order confronts those tappings in the wall… and the “house brownie” who’s doing the tapping. Almost as instantly, Jared discovers his great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick’s hidden Field Guide to the Hidden World Around You. Ignoring the rhyming warning tacked to the book’s cover (who wouldn’t?), Jared soon finds that he’s put his family into the midst of a veiled war between the good fairies and evil ogres.

Of course, they were in the middle of this whether they knew it or not… What Jared really does is open everyone’s eyes to the struggle and danger that already surrounds them, and stirs the ogre Mulgarath and his goblin henchmen into a climactic assault to snatch the Field Guide—a move that will give him the knowledge he needs to overwhelm both Faerie and the visible world.

In essence, this a Haunted House movie crossed with a Monster Movie. Think Jumanji meets Poltergeist in a Lord of the Rings setting with Narnia-type stylings. Think Spielbergian narrative over-efficiency and The Gnome-Mobile sprightliness.

Think, in fact, of something really rather new—because I’m having significant trouble coming up with a good precedent for what director Mark Waters delivers here. I honestly can’t think of another film that has captured both the “danger” of goblins (and Faerie in general) and their whimsicality. Even the sprites and such have almost three-dimensional personalities in this world, and a running gag about honey is surprisingly effective.

If there’s a downside to Spiderwick—which, thankfully, encompasses all of the volumes in the Chronicles—it’s that it moves way too fast to be truly enjoyable. Imagine, for instance, if Lucy had walked through the wardrobe in the first three minutes of Narnia, and the pace had never let up. As a result, some of the key supporting characters (such as Hogsqueal and even Mulgarath) seem awfully perfunctory, and the semi-high-profile names on the marquee (Mary Louise Parker, Seth Rogan, Nick Nolte, David Straithairn, and Martin Short) come off almost as stuntcasting. There also doesn’t seem to be any real advantage (except for one minor plot point in the early going) in having Freddie Highmore play both Jared and Simon (other than to demonstrate how believably dual casting can be pulled off with current CGI technique).

There’s a lot to be enjoyed here—like the notion of hidden things being revealed, and the very nice tension that’s set up between the need for thoughtful action and the dangers of lust for the power of knowledge. “You don’t think,” Mallory complains to Jared; “you just do.” Meanwhile, Mulgarath blindly pursues the contents of Spiderwick’s book, convinced it will bring him limitless power; but all the while, he’s unaware that this single-minded pursuit must also be his downfall.

The central theme of The Lord of the Rings is repeated to good effect here, too: not just in the way that power is a danger, but the ways in which such powers are dealt with. At Rivendell, the White Council debated whether the One Ring should be hidden, used, or destroyed in Mount Doom. Here also, the fate of the Field Guide is in question: “We must destroy the book!” insists Jared. “No,” advises Spiderwick’s words; “we must protect it.” We always know, though, what happens when unbounded power is grasped or hoarded. The end is never pretty, and Spiderwick deals with that weighty subject pretty maturely.

There are also some troubling things here, too, such as the rather nastily unresolved relationship between the children and their father. I can’t say I much relished how that particular plot point was symbolically expressed. This film is not very kind to the notion of fatherhood.

To get the maximum entertainment value for your buck, though—and there’s quite a good bit of potential here—I recommend browsing around either the extensive official movie site or the books site to get oriented to the world of Spiderwick. Your head might otherwise be spinning too rapidly for you to get your bearings, much less have a good time.

The Spiderwick Chronincles is rated PG for “scary creature action and violence, peril and some thematic elements.” This is a very fair and helpful rating, so rare from the MPAA these days.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a promotional screening of The Spiderwick Chronicles.