My Book Side

The Spiderwick Chronicles is one of the many book series out there that made it to the big screen. It’s been years now since Gaea and I first watched it but we recently bought a DVD and together, we enjoyed the film yet again.

It was the sort of experience that made me think she would love it more if she’s reading the books. As it turns out, I am done with all of them and she’s stuck with the Field Guide (first of the 5 series). These reviews will come in pretty late but I presume there are other book lovers out there who are scouting and well, can find these reviews as useful as my other reviews.

The Movie
Spiderwick Chronicles, the movie, is about the Grace Family’s adventure, which started when they moved into the Spiderwick Estate. The house formerly belonged to their grandmother’s sister, Lucinda who was believed to have gone loony and had to stay in an institute.

The adjustment was hard on all, specially for Jared, who still wished he was in the city with his father. His behavior seemed to have always made him the IT in all games – always the person to blame when something goes wrong. Mallory blamed him when her medal got missing upon their arrival, he got blamed for poking holes onto the wall and for breaking it to reveal a shaft. Incidentally, he was the one who discovered Arthur Spiderwick’s secret room as well as the Field Guide. It was upon opening the book that the story generally started.

The book made Jared curious and believe that there are other beings in our world. This included the brownie who is the source of all the mishaps happening in the house, as well as the seeing stone that allowed him to see all the magical creatures around the world. Events brought him face to face with Hogsqueal (a hobgoblin who said he was the last of his kind), whom he saved as he was saving Simon from the goblins and in return, gave him the gift of sight. The goblins however, was in the servitude of Mulgarath – a monstrous ogre who wants to possess the Field Guide so he can be lord of all the magical creatures.

The Grace family moved the story into finding measures to stop Mulgarath. That looked like the logical and most practical thing to do. Mulgarath will stop at nothing and will kill everything on its path to get the field guide. It sounded impossible but they had to try. It was at this struggle that they discovered the importance of family and that their strongest ally was their faith in each other.

Taking advantage of Mulgarath’s fatal flow – his need for the Field Guide and the knowledge Lucinda and Arthur Spiderwick shared to Jared, the Grace Family defeated Mulgarath in the end.

I loved the movie. It has brought me into working on this review and has brought me into the magical world Black and DiTerlizzi created. Unfortunately, the movie had a lot of negative feedback and I can’t help but ask, did people simply lose their idea of make-believe? Or were they expecting something extravagant because they knew that production cost was pretty high? I’m not sure.

What I know is that I didn’t have that much expectations on the film, because for one, it was my first time to hear about it. I can confirm however, that I would be disappointed if I watched the movie after I’ve read the books. There was more to it than what I’ve seen and that shall bring me to writing about the books.

Click here to read more on The Spiderwick Chronicles: Book Series.