Monster House

This dvd comes packed with serviceable navigation options, from an English audio descriptive service, to subtitles not just for the film itself but also for the commentary and featurettes. The menus feature animated images of the house at its most menacing, that will have young children suitably creeped out even before they have time to hit the play button. And of course, as a film generated in the digital domain, Monster House transfers perfectly to the dvd format, with artefact-free visuals and a 5.1 soundtrack to make your own home feel haunted by all the bass rumbles.

The filmmakers' commentary features director Gil Kenan, and two (or perhaps more) other contributors who are unfortunately not introduced by name – a little detective work will reveal that one of these, addressed as 'Jay', is probably visual effects supervisor Jay Redd, but it is impossible to be sure. Collectively they discuss the film's genesis, its use of state-of-the-art performance-capture technology to infuse the animated characters with a human dimension, and the moral underpinning of the plot. Kenan regards horror as "part of the process of growing up", and concedes that Monster House is "a little scarier than your usual children's film", but stresses the care taken to get the right balance between horrifying situations and lightness of characterisation, and insists that the film is "fun for the whole family".

Inside Monster House is seven ultra-brief making-of featurettes, playable separately or in seamless succession. They cover the design of the film's characters and sets, the unusually easy casting process (apparently all the big names asked to participate took little persuading), the process involved in shooting performance-capture sequences and converting the resultant 3-D datamaps into exquisite CG animation, and the design of the film's sound. The featurettes (each averaging three minutes) are all built around behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with an impressive range of the cast and crew. Kathleen Turner (who 'performed' the movements and voice of both Constance the Giantess and the monstrous house itself) claims that what first attracted her to the project was Kenan's unlikely pitch to her: "You played the sexiest animated character [in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?], now you can play the ugliest."

Everything here is short enough not to challenge even the most hyperactive of attention spans, and there is an engaging balance between technical details and anecdotes on a more human level.

Evolution Of A Scene: Eliza vs. Nebbercracker' enables viewers to toggle (via the 'angle' function) between five different stages of development for the same sequence: story reel animatic, performance capture (with actors in rubber suits covered in dots), the layout stage, animation, and the final film. It is also possible to view all of these at once in a five-way splitscreen, and there is an accompanying three-minute featurette in which Kenan takes us through the different stages and visual layers required to give Monster House its final, fully realised look.

Last but not least, there is an extensive collection of art stills, divided into three separate galleries. Conceptual Art consists in beautiful painted illustrations (or 'beat boards') of planned scenes for the film, including some which never made final cut (images, eg of Zee being dragged away by the house or of DJ confronting the house's flaming boiler). People is drawings and models of the characters (including, of course, the house itself), while Places And Things is a miscellany of everything else.