Fresh
The result is effective, if too intense for younger children.
Sarah Bryan Miller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Their world is closer than you think.
2008 · 1h 35m · PG
Adventure, Drama, Family, Fantasy
Directed by
Mark Waters
Overview
Upon moving into the run-down Spiderwick Estate with their mother, twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace, along with their sister Mallory, find themselves pulled into an alternate world full of faeries and other creatures.
Director and cast
- Mark Waters Director
- Freddie Highmore as Simon
- Sarah Bolger as Mallory
- David Strathairn as Arthur Spiderwick
- Mary-Louise Parker as Helen Grace
- Nick Nolte as Mulgarath
- Joan Plowright as Aunt Lucinda Spiderwick
- Andrew McCarthy as Richard Grace
- Seth Rogen as Hogsqueal (voice)
- Martin Short Cast
- Jordy Benattar Cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
81%
Tomatometer
Fresh
The storytelling is economical and brisk. In some ways, Waters approaches it more as a pre-teen horror movie.
Tom Charity, CNN.com
Fresh
Fast-paced and filled with neat special effects, it's a sure kid-pleaser, albeit one that suffers from the very elements that make it go down so easily.
Keith Phipps, AV Club
Rotten
I found it to be more irritating than scary, more tedious than exciting.
Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper
Fresh
A pleasing melange under the direction of Mark Waters, who, after Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, is becoming the go-to auteur of traumatized youth.
Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine
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