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.
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,
16 Feb 2008
rotten:
I found it to be more irritating than scary, more tedious than exciting.
– Richard Roeper,
Ebert & Roeper,
19 Feb 2008
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,
2 Apr 2008
fresh:
The storytelling is economical and brisk. In some ways, Waters approaches it more as a pre-teen horror movie.
– Tom Charity,
CNN.com,
18 Oct 2008
fresh:
The result is effective, if too intense for younger children.