YMMV / Monster House

• Awesome Music: The end credits song, "Halloween" by Siouxsie and the Banshees.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Zee's wanton destruction of DJ's mother's vase during her introduction scene, which she demonstrates to DJ in order to intimidate him into letting her do whatever she wants while playing babysitter at night. Afterwards, Zee is never shown to use similar intimidation tactics towards DJ again, and besides some light teasing, she doesn't really cause much trouble, and even steps forward to tell her boyfriend off when he takes his bullying of DJ too far. The scene where Zee needlessly destroys his parents' property is also never brought up again.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Chowder's hyperactivity and eccentricity can make one think he has something close ADD or ADHD in real life.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Officers Landers and Lister. They might be stupid cops that unintentionally make the protagonists' mission harder, but they are very hilarious to watch in every scene they appear.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A living house that likes to lure children away to kill them. Sounds like the infamous episode "My Old House" from The Haunting Hour.
  • Before this movie even existed, Courage the Cowardly Dog already had an episode named "House Calls", where a jealous, living house that emits woman-like groans and has a carpet for a tongue, forbids its owner from having any neighbors.
  • The name, aesthetic, and general difficulty of the fictional video game Thou Art Dead became this after the real life video game Dark Souls featured a similar art style and difficulty as well as featuring a catchphrase ("You Died") similar to the fictional game's title.
  • Landers and Lister are the only cops in town with the exception of someone named Judy back at the station?
• Hype Backlash: It received some during the 2006 Academy Award season when it was nominated for "Best Animated Feature," both because most felt it wasn't good enough for such a title and animation purists arguing that motion capture was not animation. To be fair, that wasn't exactly a good year for animated features.^note The other nominees were Cars and Happy Feet, the latter of which ended up winning. Some also argued that Over the Hedge got snubbed.
• Jerkass Woobie: Constance; she may have been a shrill child-hater, but her only experience with kids is them throwing things at her and teasing her, which is what was done to her in the circus where she was being essentially held prisoner. While she becomes a monster after possessing the house, the ending implies that she's as much a victim of that as anyone, since she's only able to rest in peace when the house is destroyed.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The scene where Reginald eats Chowder's candy has become a more minor one.
  • Comparing DJ and Chowder to Greg and Rowley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid has slowly started to become popular due to obvious reasons.
  • No wonder people are homophobic, this is scary AF! ^Explanation Gifs of the Monster House are captioned with this. "Homophobia" here means fear of homes.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The games released by THQ for the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2 are all considered to be fun and challenging. Although, the DS version appears to be the weakest version as it (compared to other versions) has linear design, short length, barely any collectible secrets & lacks Thou Art Dead as a playable game from the other versions.
• One-Scene Wonder: Jon Heder as Reginald "Skull" Skulinski. He's in the film for less than five minutes, in the scene at the diner where he's playing the "Thou Art Dead" arcade game and DJ, Chowder, and Jenny ask him for advice about the possessed house.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Only two rooms of the house, the entrance hall and the basement, are actually explored before the kids are forced to escape it.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Generally agreed to be the only fully Motion Capture-animated film that actually works, thanks to its heavy stylization to avoid the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. With the exception of a couple of moments where things seem to move a bit too fluidly, one could easily mistake this for any other animated film.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It's a movie about a man-eating house, which is possessed by the soul of a woman whose remains are still in the basement, buried under concrete. The studio even mandated that all of the victims be seen unharmed at the end to keep it family-friendly.

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