Hopefully you won’t find this too vulgar of me, but when I think of the Laika film studios, the word that keeps coming to mind is “ballsy”.
With five feature films already under their belt (two of which, The Boxtrolls and Missing Link, I still need to see), they have been walking to the beat of their own drum since Coraline came out in 2009. I was a little late to the party, having only discovered them a decade ago with Kubo & the Two Strings (which I called the best film of 2016); it did not take long to realize they make films that are a darker alternative to the films of Disney, Pixar, Illumination, and the other studios around.
Now comes their sixth feature-length film, Wildwood, the second (after Kubo) to be directed by Laika’s CEO Travis Knight. Adapted from the 2011 book of the same name (written by Colin Meloy and Carsen Ellis), the film’s protagonist is a girl named Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), whose baby brother is stolen away by crows (in a scene clearly attributed to Hitchcock). She and her rather unlucky friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) venture into the woods outside of town (Portland, Oregon) to reveal…well,…quite the adventure of talking animals (especially birds and wolves), a shunned witch, tragic heartbreak, and incessant thrills.
While I consider myself a veteran moviegoer, I admit I was unaware of most of the voice cast until the end credits (I was aware ahead of time of Jacob Tremblay, plus it is hard not to notice the voices of Awkwafina and Charlie Day). Those voices I did not recognize until the end include Carey Mulligan, Angela Bassett, Amandla Stenberg, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, and Mahershala Ali. Like the other Laika films I have confronted, it is not about the actors, but the story and the visuals.
From what I found on the film’s wiki page, the amount of time spent filming was…well, a lot. The voice recordings were way back in 2021 (explaining why Tremblay sounds the way he does). Then the animation work began. I recently just saw a clip on Laika’s YouTube page where Knight simply says: “Stop motion is the worst way there is to make a movie.” There is a glimpse in the end credits that shows how the film was constructed, and if you look at Laika’s YouTube page, you will see new ways to define working arduously and with patient persistence in art. Mad respect for these people.
Then there is the overall tone. Parents, this is easily the darkest PG-13 film of its kind since last year’s Predator: Badlands. The tone is set in the very first scene (and remains unaltered), featuring (non-sexual) nudity. Then there are scenes that would rival anything that takes place in a Tolkien tale. Add in some casual swearing (no F bombs) and the fact that not all characters are safe, and you got one of the darker and grittier animated films in decades (and I am not exempting anime).
Sadly, Laika is 0 for 3 at the Oscars in the best animated feature category. While it is hard to argue Coraline could have won against Disney/Pixar’s Up, I still maintain Kubo is a better movie than Zootopia.
While there are at least two more upcoming animated films I am aware of that are being released this year (Ray Gunn and Hexed), they will have a lot to live up to, because Wildwood is hands down the animated film of the year.
Prepare to be smacked in the gob.
Overall:
