Coraline

The animation company, Laika has provided the world with various films that feature both a child-centred wonder, but also a dark overtone to their stories and atmosphere which has resulted in wildly creative and unique kids’ films with an adult edge that aren’t massive global hits but leave an impact on their audience. It’s a style of making movies that has kind of been lost over the years, especially in regard to content for children, where it has that nice blend of colorful imaginative energy but is laced with this dark uncomfortable driving force that no kid will forget, but for the right reasons. Coraline is no exception to this and scares its kid audience straight while still providing a colorful, entertaining, and timeless film. After moving away from her much-preferred hometown, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) yearns for a better life away from her distant parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), when she discovers a hidden door in her new apartment complex that takes her to a parallel version of her home with overly perfect doubles of her family (also voiced by Hatcher and Hodgman) with buttons for eyes. Once she continues to visit this world and slowly starts to enjoy it more than her real life, the world only grows more psychotic and more hostile after its revealed that her other parents, mainly her other mother, want to sew buttons into her eyes so she can stay there forever. Now knowing the sinister secrets of her new idealized environment, that this creature that was posing as her mother is actual an ancient demon that has been devouring the souls of children for centuries, and that her actual parents have been captured by this creature in order to force her to return,  Coraline must fight for her life and escape the clutches of her ”Other Mother” who is willing to do anything to keep Coraline all to herself.  Directed and written by Henry Sellick and based on the book written by Neil Gaiman, this film proves to be as insane as it sounds but is also full of creative designs, charming characters, a plentiful of nightmarish imagery, and a message taken to a whole new extreme with the use of dark and disturbing elements.

The movie changes stuff up from the original story with added characters and different obstacles that need to be overcome, but it does capture the spirit and atmosphere of the book pretty nicely. Gaiman’s other work like The Sandman, Good Omens and American Gods, usually feature a fantastical element to them but they’re usually more adult-centric, which gives more context to the tone of this story that feels like a kid story in framework but one that has been submerged in a truly horrific tone. The basic plot doesn’t rely on plot twists or revolutionary narratives, it’s more of an experience movie, encountering each new creation and having to question whether you should be amused or threatened.  Its message is beyond basic, but the length it goes to show you the dangers of ignoring the message makes it more memorable. It works much like an old fairy tale or a Brothers Grimm book, where it uses fear to reach the observer and get them to remember the lesson. It’s a cautionary tale of rushing to what looks like the best more appealing option without releasing the consequences and learning to value parts of your life that seem mundane but are worth more than you can give them credit for. It really does capture this feeling of old-fashion scary kids movies where the atmosphere feels pretty genuine with how odd everybody looks and the threats feel legitimately terrifying and life-threatening. The film never tries to spell out what the message is, but the disturbing moments make it quite clear what it is saying and why it should be listened to. In an ironic twist, the story and film seem to have been made softer by the inclusion of Henry Selick as director, who has worked with stop-motion in the past like Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, movies that have a creative creepiness to them, but not to this extent. This film doesn’t hold back with frightening designs, haunting atmosphere, and a whole lot of nightmare fuel all around, it warrants the PG rating with extreme imagery and some truly scary ideas, this will be a movie that will scar young children, but in the best way possible.  Moments can drag a bit too long, mainly in the first half, but overall the story feels much better paced out than it was in the original story where components seem to pop up pretty quickly and lack a proper build-up as opposed to this film where instances that are meant to be shocking reveals are presented as such. The film does suffer from having two climaxes; where one is really effective and a great closer to this story, while the other juts feel like a tag-on to wrap up other plot lines. It doesn’t ruin anything, but it does feel pretty pointless.

Feeling a lot like an eighties film, the characters are cynical and not perfect, with every one of them having some form of selfish edge to them. Even Coraline can be mean-spirited and bratty at times, but that just makes it more important when she does come around and realizes who the real monster is. Despite that, she is a very likable character. The film would have lost a lot of its energy, engagement and even interest if she weren’t someone who you wanted to watch and want to see escape this hellish world. Dakota Fanning makes this character as strong as she is, owning the role to a point where it doesn’t feel like a performance and providing a tone of character and reliability that is truly effective and engaging. The film uses its visual medium to its advantage by conveying various elements of characterization through simple expressions and actions. Though not written especially interestingly and suffering a bit due to the lack of character perspective narration the story would have had with her, so much of her personality comes through her facial expressions and actions. She’s easily one of the strongest points to the film. The cat played by Keith David comes across as delightfully mysterious, well-spoken, and intelligent and Teri Hatcher’s calm and comforting motherly voice becomes that much scarier when the real monster is revealed, ranging from sinister whispers to blood-curtailing screeches. The side characters have very distinct designs and have particularly good actors to portray them like Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Ian McShane, making these pointless characters entertaining and they have wonderfully creepy other versions of themselves that provide a nice contrast to the original’s personalities.

The environment they create is a perfect blend of being magically enchanting and horrifyingly desolate. It cleverly contrasts the generic bland looking real world with stronger colors, more prominently lighting and intriguingly creative oddities in the other world. The colder color palette makes it even easier for the film to be comforting one moment and terrifying the next. It understands to make the world inviting and appealing first before transitioning into the grimmer atmosphere. The stop-motion style of animation was something that Henry Sellick was always great at, but this one was allowed to go much darker and more intentionally scary as opposed to his other kid-oriented work which was still trying to find a right balance between sweet and scary. The good people are designed very uniquely with interesting proportions and styles, while the button people are gifted these great ‘doll’ smiles when they are good, and truly horrifying designs when they are bad, particularly the other mother who just seems to get more and more creepy as each layer gets peeled off of her (sometimes even literally). She looks like a spider and a mannequin doll that’s made out of sewing needles, combining two creepy components, and meshing them together to really create a standout design. The movie does seem to feel different in pace and even slightly style to how the book handled itself; with the book being more slow and methodical in its scares, whereas the animation and pacing of this movie seems a bit more ‘in your face’ and dramatic, but neither are bad and honestly having these differences make both worth checking out to see how they handled similar scenes.

Coraline has a lot of charm, wonder and imagination to it, but also remembers to be dark, disturbing, and surprisingly intense. It captures the excitable adventurous side of a child, but also the sense of panic and fear that’s also very recognizable for that age. The main character is enjoyable to watch and is identifiable in her fears and her struggle to survive, its light and colorful in the right places, and grim and disturbed in the right places, it can be watched at any time without feeling dated, and it focuses more on actual scary imagery instead of being too gory or violent. Despite being intense and grim, it always comes back to the true spirit of home that can connect with a lot of viewers. Coraline knows how to make a fantasy world a perfect reality, but with a dark twisted edge that won’t be so easily forgotten.