Prepare to be scared: Monster House is an animated movie with a Gothic horror bite that might appeal to adults as well as children.

"The point is that kids' stories don't have to be dumbed down," says youthful director Gil Kenan.

"They don't have to be just about talking squirrels. There is more that kids have an aptitude for. I really don't think we give them enough credit for the depth of their imagination, and their bravery, and their intelligence as an audience.

"So, to be able to give them a film that is actually going to provoke some reactions, is going to challenge some kids, is actually something that I'm really proud of."

Kenan makes his observations during a Sun interview that is part of a whirlwind publicity tour that brings him to Toronto. Monster House opens across North America tomorrow and the first-time director is pumped.

"I grew up watching films when I was a kid that were really provocative -- classic and contemporary -- in terms of what they made me experience."

He cites Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial as a prime example. "You know, E.T. was a really horrifying experience for me as a kid -- but it changed my life."

Another example is even older, "and in a very different camp," says Kenan. "But Chitty Chitty Bang Bang totally blew me away when I saw it as a kid because it starts off and kind of lulls you into this nice, light-hearted, European frolicking fantasy. And then it takes a turn into this weird toy dungeon -- and it's horrifying. There is a tradition of family films that don't pander and all I'm trying to do is remind kids that they can experience more than just giggles."

In Monster House, three neighbourhood kids -- two boy pals and the girl they've just met -- encounter the horror that has turned a creepy house into a life-threatening fright just before Halloween.

One of the intriguing things about the movie is on the credit list: The executive producers are Kenan's boyhood idol Spielberg and Who Framed Roger Rabbit director Robert Zemeckis. They hired Kenan for the Monster House job after seeing his student film, The Lark. Kenan made the horror-fantasy short at the UCLA film school.

Kenan now enthuses about the Spielberg-Zemeckis team as his mentors, advisors, enablers and financiers.

"They're filmmakers themselves, obviously, so they know what it takes to make a film. Basically, they were the best film professors you could ever ask for. They made themselves available to me over the last three years so that, whenever I had a question, whenever I wanted to screen a cut, whenever I wanted to bounce any ideas off of them, they were there for me. In that regard, I just couldn't ask for better producers."

Spielberg and Zemeckis advised on the crucial issue of tone for his comic horror film, Kenan says. "I was always very conscious of the fact that I was toeing a line between scary and funny and not wanted to cross over into parody on the funny side or into too-horrific horror on the other."

Kenan got inspirational encouragement. "For them to give me that kind of pat on the back was huge. Because this is a huge responsibility. This movie is not a trivial enterprise. So I had to make sure that I treated the finished product with respect the whole way through."

The process was daunting. Monster House was shot entirely through motion capture, much like Zemeckis' The Polar Express, except no one hogged most of the roles like Tom Hanks did on that Christmas flick. Kenan, getting his wish-list filled because of the lure of his big-name producers, cast character actors Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, Fred Willard and even wacked-out Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame.

The movie was shot live in a small studio and then digitally animated in post-production. Kenan says one piece of advice stood out during this arduous process.

"The critical advice I got from the two of them was that the story comes first. Our job as filmmakers is chiefly as storytellers and everything else that happens is all second fiddle, is all there as a supporting role to telling a great story.

"That is something that I'm going to take with me for the rest of my life because every single detail is really there just to prop up the story, including the technology, including individual performances, including sound effects and music. It is all part of what should be an invisible process for the audience. They should just sit back and be told a good story -- and I learned that from two of the best!"

Kids' imagination the key to House

The child actors playing the kids in Monster House needed big imaginations to make it real and not just weird.

"It's so different that of course, you're going to feel a little funny," says Sam Lerner, who plays Mitchel Musso's chubby sidekick Chowder in the movie.

Because Monster House is a motion capture movie, the actors dressed in tight coloured suits on a bare stage for their scenes. Their suits and faces were covered with electronic impulse dots that allow computerized cameras to track their every muscle twitch and expression.

"We thought it was really funny at first when we had the suit and the dots," says Lerner (nephew of respected actor Michael Lerner). "But, after the first week, it was: 'Get your dots on!' "

Director Gil Kenan made things fun for the actors, especially the child stars, says Spencer Locke, who plays the heroine Jenny in the movie.

"Gil, it's a good thing he's so amazing," Locke says. "He explained everything and he told us what we were 'seeing' because we had to imagine everything. There was no house in front of us, that we could see, that was 'scaring' us."

In the end, Lerner and Locke are amazed by how the movie looks -- and how much of themselves they find in their motion control characters even though each has changed since the filming (Lerner, for example, slimmed down).

"It's really cool because we can see ourselves in the character," says Lerner.

"Those characters are us," says Locke. "I see Sam completely in Chowder. I see Mitchel completely in D.J. I see myself in Jenny. But it definitely is weird. It's been two years and it's all coming back now."