Yeah, I would say it was definitely geared towards kids. Kind of a step between The Goonies and Pitch Black or something. I'm having trouble seeing the resemblance, but apparently the lead kid is Stephen Dorff, who played Deacon Frost in the first Blade movie.

** SPOILER **

When the gardener gets knocked out, then falls face first to the floor and busts into about 30 of those claymation guys, that was really a cool freaking idea. I wonder who originally thought that up? It's kinda one of those chicken and egg things: did someone write the story and they decided claymation was the proper efx, or did someone think up the cool claymation possibilities ahead of time and then wrote the story around those ideas. I suspect it was the latter.