The Coraline Post

Coraline is an interesting film and takes a direction not often tread by comparable movies. A uncanny and twisted adventure with just enough weirdness and creepiness to keep it entertaining and mildly terrifying a the same time. A fairytale nightmare most closely matched by the previous Henry Selick outings Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach- Coraline features the same stop motion animation seen in previous movies, but done on a level that truly impresses. Partnered with highly stylized art direction and character design, the film is as engages the audience in multiple ways with its story and its composition.

The basic plot centers on a young girl (Coraline) moving against her will to a secluded little down with her folks. Often ignored and brushed off by her overworked parents she becomes very disgruntled and depressed in her new home. Though a series of events she fiends a doorway to another version of her life, a dream world that’s ‘perfect’ with a mother who would do anything to keep Coraline happy, and stay with her on the other side of the door forever. The dream world is a wonderful place for the little girl or so she thought. Dot dot dot. I won’t go any further but the twisted tale involves a witch who steals soles and replaces children’s eyes with buttons. Not what one would expect from a seemingly childish fairytale.

My main gripe with the movie is that there is not enough character development with any of the main characters, which unfortunately really hurts this film more than most. If you are trying to get my to buy into the fact that this plastasine wireframe is a person I should care about, then you need to flesh her out even more so than other moves do when they have flat characters. Coraline just wasn’t established well enough before her adventure started, and unfortunately was less relatable throughout as a result. The worst instance of the characters being to single sided is with Coraline’s parents. We don’t see any of the good-side of them until the end of the movie, and considering that the plot hinges around their value to their daughter and her choosing between her real mother and her other-mother, this is a big drawback.

Despite character issues however the movie is very entertaining, and eerie enough to stay fresh throughout. There where some downright scary elements to the film that are the stuff of nightmares, but in its childish presentation it works really well as a whole. There are some things that just don’t make sense, and a few issues with pacing, but overall it’s an enjoyable movie, if not a hard to place one.