The imagination of every child has been fired up at one time or another by a house in the neighbourhood that local legend maintains is haunted.

To 12-year-old DJ Walters and his tubby buddy Chowder the creaking clapboard mansion lived in by curmudgeonly widower Nebbbercracker (Buscemi) across the road fits the bill perfectly.

All manner of toys - tricycles, dolls and kites - stray onto the lawn fronting the sagging property only to mysteriously disappear into the creaking bowels of the old place.

The situation grows darker when DJ appears to give the crotchety old git a heart attack while trying to retrieve a basketball... and a crank phone call - traced back to the apparently empty old house - convinces him that's he's marked.

Together with Chowder and sharp prep schoolgirl Jenny, DJ is determined to penetrate the gloomy old house and discover its secret.

Utilising the motion-capture process pioneered in The Polar Express, director Gil Kenan bestows his young leads with utterly authentic movement.

The fact that they're delivering dialogue peppered with salty one-liners - some racily pitched at grown-ups - lends the movie a weighty punch.

Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis executive produce...and their trademark dabs are all over the place - from the resilience of the kids to the visual invention that has gone into the cannabalistic house-from-hell.

There really is a lot to relish here: DJ and Chowder are believably nascent teens, wrestling with the rush of puberty and babysitters-with-attitude (a splendid Maggie Gyllenhaal).

The scares are genuine (mum and dad will be seeking behind-the-sofa space with the kids) while the explanation of the house's vengeful disposition seems to have been plucked from some dark Eastern European fairytale.

It's Grade A kids' entertainment that never patronises but plays on the unassailable fact that nippers really like to be scared.

Boo.

Tim Evans