Most would consider ‘Coraline’ to be a family movie, but, while it starts off innocuously enough, this puppeteered creeper turns nightmarish when the film’s surrealist world goes gleefully bizarro a quarter through. The stop-motion production is eerie, yet masterfully accomplished in that iconic (but actually disaccredited) Tim Burton-esque execution, which for the first time is presented in a fully stereoscopic 3-D experience that is more successfully immersive than gimmicky and distracting.
‘Coraline’ is based on the book by Neil Gaiman, an author whose sensibilities match well with the director, so the film version shouldn’t come as too much of a betrayal, especially since Henry Selick was hand-picked by Gaiman to write the manuscript. Selick, a writer, director, and animator, may have some steeped inclination toward the nightmares of his youth since his past filmography almost exclusively consists of similarly macabre children’s stories like ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas.’ His previous were the sort of movies that only skirted the line of being too creepy for the kids; ‘Coraline,’ however, pulls out all the weird stops in presenting a surreal fantasy that might be more appropriate for a more mature audience.
Coraline Jones (who is voiced with gusto by Dakota Fanning) is a feisty 11-year-old girl with stick-like appendages and blue hair, for what the film is named. She is curious, adventurous and an endearing character to watch on screen, but the poor sprite is neglected by her dull technophile parents who are perpetually fixated on typing up a gardening catalogue.
When she is forced to move to a glum neighborhood in a foggy spot of countryside, Coraline must find fun and intrigue in the absence of her old friends. Since Mom and Dad can’t deliver, Coraline gives up pleading for their attention and goes off to explore the new environment on her own, where she finds distraction through a weird local boy, Wybie Loyat’ (‘Why Be Born’ as he’s called) and visits her older neighbors, eccentric twin acting duo Miss Spink and Forcible, as well as a strange old Russian contortionist named Mr. Robinsky.
Soon after introductions, Coraline seriously doubts there is anything in her new home that can entertain her ravenous desire for adventure. That is, until she starts looking within her own mysterious abode. When Coraline happens upon a door and goes through a hall behind it, she’s led into an alternative realm where her greatest fantasies become a dream-like reality. There she sneaks off at night to meet a more hospitable version of her mother and father, who are ready and willing to shower Coraline with gifts and attention. By her third visit, Coraline’s dream world behind the walls reveals its disturbing truths: an evil witch who seeks to devour Coraline’s soul by sewing buttons into her eyes and a set of doppelgangers who begin to show equally harrowing intentions.
Throughout Coraline’s aberrations, the film showcases a wide display of oddities. Mr. Robinsky’s circus of orchestral mice, a talking cat, human characters with their flesh sewn through and a pair of nude geriatric mermaids concealed only with pasties are among just a few of the ludicrous happenings that occur in rapid succession throughout the film, but ‘Coraline’ is unapologetic in all of its delightful weirdness.
The film’s procession of whimsy might wear on some, since behind all its inventive production ‘Coraline’s’ plot is essentially a well-crafted bedtime story. Indeed, this modern tale could use a bit more fairy dust sprinkled in its narrative to make up for the amount of lyricism poured into its artistic direction, but the innovative entrancements of Selick’s artistry will still leave audiences in deliciously perturbed awe behind their 3-D frames.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
