History YMMV / TheHouseWithAClockInItsWalls

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: For book fans, basically everything except possibly Jack Black as Uncle Jonathan. Lewis is no longer a chubby kid who loves books and chocolate more than sports, Mrs. Zimmerman is not only HotterAndSexier but given a tragic Nazi-related backstory, the Izzards are suddenly an interracial couple with a tragic motive (on his part) who used to be buddies with heroes, and Rose Rita goes from a white tomboy who hates dresses, has glasses, wears a beanie, and excels at sports to a conventionally-pretty POC girl who is already into books and magic. If you identified with any character and liked having genuinely evil villains? Sucks to be you.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Jonathan keeps his highly dangerous [[TomeOfEldritchLore book of necromancy]] inside a locked, magically warded cabinet - and the key right next to it. It takes a child a matter of seconds to get it open, nearly leading to the end of the world.
** Why do Jonathan and Florence assume [[spoiler:Selena is dead? Because they don't see her when they first enter the house. As it turns out, she was just hiding in the next room.]]
** It's worth noting Jonathan and Florence somehow mistook a simple substitution cypher for an actual language. That's difficult to do. Even if you know nothing about cyphers, anything put through a secret decoder ring is going to be ''wfsz pcwjpvtmz opu b mbohvbhf''[[note]]very obviously not a language[[/note]].
*** Albeit justified in another angle: Jonathan stated that he had no television in the house, when Lewis told him about his favorite television show. How else would Lewis think of using a decoder ring?

* TearJerker:
** Lewis confessing what he did, and Jonathan's response - first anger (not unjustified), then resignation, and finally some sorrow as he concludes that it was a mistake to bring the boy to live with him at all. Lewis is ''distraught'' at the notion that he's about to lose the only family he has left.
** Mrs. Zimmerman talking about how much she misses her husband and daughter, and angrily telling Jonathan about what it means to be a parent, is painful to anyone who has been through a similar loss.
** "Say goodbye."

* CompleteMonster: [[WickedWitch Selenna Izard]] is a cruel old witch who helped construct the [[ArtifactOfDoom titular clock]] with her late, despised husband Isaac. The clock itself is a powerful artifact with the power to end the world when stopped at a certain time. When freed from her tomb, Selenna pursues the young hero Lewis Barnavelt, murders one of her own men to create a HandOfGlory and attempts to murder Lewis's protectors to get to him for the clock. Selenna then tries to threaten Lewis into giving up the clock by threatening to torture his uncle and the good witch Florence, intending on using the clock to [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt end the world]] out of sheer spite.