Eli Roth has built a career on making full-on gore-soaked horrors like Hostel, Cabin Fever, Green Inferno, and a remake of Death Wish. So, when a movie adaptation of John Bellairs’ beloved children’s book The House With A Clock In Its Walls was announced, Eli Roth wasn’t the first filmmaker that springs to mind to take on the project. However, the first trailer has arrived, and it looks pretty darn spooky, in a PG-13 friendly way of course.

After the parents tragically died, young Lewis Barnavel (Owen Vaccaro) is sent to live with his uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in a strange old house. Lewis soon discovers that his uncle is a powerful warlock and assists him in preventing an evil wizard hellbent on bringing about the apocalypse. Also starring Cate Blanchett and Kyle MacLachlan, with a script from Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, The House With A Clock In Its Walls will be released in the UK on September 28.

In the tradition of Amblin classics where fantastical events occur in the most unexpected places, Jack Black and two-time Academy Award® winner Cate Blanchett star in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, from Amblin Entertainment. The magical adventure tells the spine-tingling tale of 10-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart. But his new town’s sleepy façade jolts to life with a secret world of warlocks and witches when Lewis accidentally awakens the dead. Based on the beloved children’s classic written by John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey, The House with a Clock in Its Walls is directed by master frightener Eli Roth and written by Eric Kripke (creator of TV’s Supernatural). Co-starring Kyle MacLachlan, Colleen Camp, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Vanessa Anne Williams and Sunny Suljic, it is produced by Mythology Entertainment’s Brad Fischer (Shutter Island) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac), as well as Kripke.