Those are the words I hastily scrawled in my reporter’s notebook during a recent screening of “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” The movie, based on a best-selling novel for young people, has no doubt been eagerly awaited by the book’s fans ¡X who most likely will be well pleased by the filmmakers’ visualization of the story’s many goblins, fairies, sprites and otherwise otherworldly creatures.

But for the uninitiated? Man, it’s a bummer.

The Spiderwick of the chronicles in question would be Arthur, a metaphysical explorer who, 80 years ago, discovered how to see into the supernatural world. He wrote down and illustrated his findings in a leather-bound tome that looks like Guillermo del Toro’s daily diary. But in making such secrets known, he got crosswise with an evil ogre named Mulgarath.

Cue time shift to the present day, when Arthur’s great-niece Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) moves into ye olde Spiderwick estate with twin sons Simon and Jared (Freddie Highmore, playing two characters in a neat trick of visual legerdemain) and daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger). As is made clear when the family pulls up to the spooky Victorian pile, all is not well on the domestic front. Helen has left the kids’ dad, and the children are dealing with the separation in their own ways. Mallory takes her aggression out by fiercely defending her mother and practicing her fencing skills. Simon, the constant conciliator, announces, “I don’t do conflict.” It’s Jared who’s got the anger issues, sulking with his iPod and lashing out at his mom and sibs with snotty hostility.

So when things begin to go haywire in the house, everyone assumes it’s Jared’s fault ¡X who else would tie Mallory’s hair to her bedpost, or slip keys and valuable items into a hidden dumbwaiter? Soon enough, though, Jared, Simon and Mallory have embarked on a hunt for the ghosties and gobblies who make things go bump in the night (and in the daytime, it turns out).

Eventually, the three Graces meet up with Mulgarath, who takes human form in the person of Nick Nolte, surprisingly well suited for the job. “The Spiderwick Chronicles” takes place in the course of one day, after Jared discovers Arthur’s book, meets a brownie named Thimbletack (voiced by Martin Short), witnesses Simon being kidnapped by the ogre’s toadlike hench-things, rescues him with the aid of a hobgoblin named Hogsqueal (Seth Rogen), escapes the clutches of a dragonlike troll and flies with his brother and sister on the back of a huge griffin to visit Arthur, who has been living in suspended animation with dandelion-like creatures called the Sylph.

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