The Spiderwick Chronicles is the most enjoyable PG fantasy this side of Hogwarts, and the first worthy rival to J. K. Rowling’s mighty franchise. Mark Waters’s supernatural mix of real actors and animated monsters is a ripper of yarn: emotionally messy and surprisingly frightening.

The story is slight. A grumpy mother (Mary-Louise Parker) and her three squabbling children inherit a gothic mansion in New England. Jared (Freddie Highmore, utterly convincing as a spoilt and sour American teenager), finds a cursed magic manual written by the late Uncle Spiderwick (David Strathairn). Within minutes their home is besieged by warty hobgoblins led by a marvellously deranged ogre (Nick Nolte) who has spent years trying to sink his claws into the book’s secrets.

There is nothing wildly novel about Waters’s fable, which takes its cue from the eponymous children’s stories composed by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. But the ugliness of the creatures and the visceral intimacy of the violence are a shivering joy.

What distinguishes Waters’s film is the way he poisons the fantasy with the steady drip of cold reality. Grief and magic are essential ingredients in all great childhood stories. Highmore’s disaffected hero is umbilically attached to the anguish. His sense of betrayal when his father fails to turn up is as pungent as the flights on the back of a griffin, or the encounter with a psychopathic troll.

There are precious few ounces of Disney sweetness about this modern fairytale. The usual pious sentiments do turn up, but Waters has done a splendid job trimming these moments to the bone.

PG, 96mins

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