From its Karloffian butler Lurch to a winking instance of dead-frog revivification, the latest film version of The Addams Family clearly invokes James Whale’s 1931 film Frankenstein. The Addams Family, though, also hearkens back to Universal horror in its featuring of a pair of mob scenes.

In the film’s opening, the nuptials of Gomez and Morticia are interrupted by angry villagers–a horde of crusty rustics wielding torches and pitchforks and decrying the presence of such “monsters” and “freaks” in the area. This being a children’s animated film (rated PG for “macabre and suggestive humor, and some action”), the proceedings do not turn too grim (the sword-wielding Addams fend off the villagers by causing the latter’s pants to fall down around their ankles). Nevertheless, such expressed intolerance chases the Addams from the Old Country, forcing them to relocate to New Jersey (“Somewhere horrible. Somewhere corrupt. Somewhere no one in their right mind would be caught dead in!”).

There the Addams convert a former asylum for the criminally insane into the family mansion looming remotely on a hilltop. But after thirteen years of relative isolation, the Addams come into contact with the locals and soon discover that the persecution of perceived otherness exists in the New World as well. In the film’s climax, the roused rabble (led by duplicitous designer Margaux Needler) nearly destroys the Addams home with a boulder-launching catapult. These rabid neighborhood watchdogs eventually repent, and help repair the damage caused, yet this happy ending does not blunt the film’s skewering, American Gothic sensibility. The seemingly idyllic slice of suburban engineering dubbed Assimilation (a community that works to eradicate difference rather than accept it) is shown to have various shades of darkness underlying its Day-Glo veneer.

The Addams Family is a mordantly witty and extremely enjoyable film, whose skillful inclusion of mob scenes aligns it with eminent animated horror films such as Paranorman and Frankenweenie.