The Short List of Things to Do

A guide to what you should see and what you should skip — and what you won't be able to avoid

The Spiderwick Chronicles

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Moving with his family into an old, dark house, troubled preteen Jared (Freddie Highmore) finds a land of fairies and monsters. Conflating the five books of Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's Narnia-lite saga into one brisk epic, Spiderwick pirouettes smartly between wondrous and scary, mixing kid-movie sentiment into its horror-film chills.

Grade: B

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