Coraline (2009)

 

I never saw this movie in theaters ‘till it had a 15th Anniversary release earlier this year. But this is a really, really good movie. I will get more into why after the plot.

The plot follows Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning of Cat in the Hat fame… remember that movie?) as she and her parents Charlie (John Hodgmen) and Mel (Teri Hatcher) move into The Pink Palace. A… boarding house? Apartment complex? Duplex? Fuck dungeon? Big house with other residents. Old lesbians who live in the basement (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), and a Russian man who definitely survived Chernobyl (Ian McShane). Her only friend is a kid named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.). Her life sucks cause her parents are focused on writing gardening articles for magazines… despite them not liking to garden? She runs into Wybie in the forest surrounding the Pink Palace in a shot seen in all of the trailers where he scares the shit out of her with his bike. Wybie gives her a doll that looks like her mysteriously. Coraline is seduced into this other world that looks just like her own, and the leader is The Other Mommy, I mean Other Mommy, I mean Other Mommy, I mean Other Mommy, I mean Other Mommy, I mean- yeah she runs into the internet's favorite milf, The Other Mother AKA The Beldam. A witch that eats children. She murdered three other kids prior to the events of the movie. A family picture! Coraline is aided in defeating the Beldam with the help of a cat named… Cat (Keith David) whose sexy voice isn’t used enough in this film. Coraline does three challenges and manages to defeat the Other Mother.

My snarky synopsis aside, and yes it was a tad longer than Teen Wolf’s because there's quite a bit to unpack in this movie. This movie doesn’t fuck around. It doesn’t dumb anything down or treat its intended audience like idiots. This is a kids movie, but it treats the audience like mature adults. Showing them themes of horror and suspense under the guise of a stop-motion kids movie.

And speaking of stop-motion! This movie is gorgeous! I looooove the animation in this film. It's so stunning and so beautiful. I forget it’s stop-motion sometimes because it’s so fluid. The sequence in the spider-web room is outstanding. How they accomplished it in mother fucking 2009 and it still looks good to this day is inspiring. This was Laika’s first movie and it’s important to note it was an adaptation of a book by Neil Gaiman, who also co-wrote the screenplay, and Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas. These are key people because it was Gaiman’s book Selick’s brand of storytelling that made it what it is.

I give this movie a blazing four skulls. Steve says check it out. If you haven’t seen it already, get out from under that damn rock already.
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