Director: Travis Knight
Writer: Chris Butler
Stars: Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali
Synopsis: The adventures of Prue McKeel as she sets off to the forests outside Portland to find her kidnapped brother.
Stop-motion animation is an art form that we only see every now and again and despite most everyone seeing the obvious charm of it, it still feels like we tend to take the painstaking work that goes into it for granted. There’s just something so special about being able to witness virtually every hand-crafted piece of movement that went into a singular puppet or meticulously shaped ball of clay no matter how refined. From the rougher edges of Adam Elliot’s features like Memoir of a Snail, the simple charms of Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, and the studios with arguably the most refined work, Aardman, and Laika. Laika in particular is seen as a pioneer within the medium, blazing a path forward for more increasingly insane technical feats despite their films not really known for gathering the most commercial success. All of this to say, Laika’s latest film nearly two decades in the making, Wildwood, from both an artistic and thematic standpoint represents the sheer prowess of what hand-crafted art is capable of in a world that needs more of it with each passing day.
People have never felt more dependent on artificiality with A.I. running rampant in nearly every part of our lives, and it’s a special kind of wondrous to witness a film drenched with an abundance of hand-crafted love that takes its simple core and bursts with an abundance of love for its craft and ever-growing fantastical world. Sometimes the world and narrative can be too sprawling or one-note for the film’s own good, but the overwhelming nature of it all adds to the whole experience of undeniable scale and Wildwood ,more than anything else, is a new pinnacle for the studio on every technical front.
The story slowly unfolds beginning in the cozy town of Portland, Oregon (where the actual Laika animation studio is based) as we meet the latest of Laika’s iconically designed lead characters, Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee). Prue is a teenager, dead set on finally getting her chance to grow up both as her own person and out of her father (Jake Johnson) and mother’s (Maya Erskine) fantasies of the Impassable wilderness she was told as a child, and that they now tell her younger brother Mac (Arthur Knight). Prue’s parents don’t let Mac go outside for unknown reasons, but on this fateful day, Prue decides to take her brother out with her bike to see the sights of Portland with coffee in hand, running into her sheepishly-awkward classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay) along the way.
While visiting a playground, Prue and Curtis witness a murder of crows snag Mac off the top of a slide leading to a bike chase that sends Prue and Curtis into the heart of the impassable wilderness, where Prue discovers the stories she’s been told for so long have some truth to them. Bandits, talking animals, and people of mystic magic (oh my!) all roam the land but Wildwood itself has been at a standstill between factions with Dowager Governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) igniting most conflicts with her coyote soldiers in a non-stop pursuit to do whatever it takes to use Mac as a sacrifice to bring her long lost son back. With her brother’s life on the line, Prue and Curits make multiple allies and enemies on their journey to save Mac and along the way Prue learns she has more magic within her than she ever could have imagined.
Having the majestic splendor worthy of sweeping you off your feet is one thing, but matching it with enough of a well-realized fantasy world can be another, and luckily Wildwood is awe-inspiring on both fronts. Every character Prue meets on her adventure always feels completely realized in their past despite us just having met them. From king of the bandits Brenden (Mahershala Ali), bird leaders of the Avian Principality Owl Rex (Richard E. Grant) and The General (Angela Bassett) each faction of Wildwood’s world feels as if it could birth a whole expansive story of its own.
In its sprawling reach, Wildwood echoes of the transportive qualities found within the best Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke with an added touch of Pan’s Labyrinth within its darker subject matter. There are often points, in fact, where the world is so built up that it feels like the film can buckle under the copious weight of so much going on narratively. It’s to the point where you wonder if it should’ve been even longer than its near 140-minute runtime, but there’s never a moment where things grow dull within the endless creativity to be found in each character and location.
Prue as a central protagonist within the realm of dark fantasy tales is already refreshing as she is a character unconvinced by what most people her age would like to see as dreams coming true at first glance. What makes the character’s captivating though is the inherent likability of Prue and Curtis, side-by-side with their relationship to the world growing up around them. Many have been in the shoes of unsure nature in the transition away from adolescence, and while Prue’s growth in realizing she can still retain the wondrous joys of childhood and come to terms with the realities of becoming older in an increasingly bleak world isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, the film realizes it in such a loving way, taking the time to engage in complex conversations that many other animated films would gloss over.
It’s even more fascinating when you contrast when you view every character’s relationship with Alexandra, who instead of coming to terms with the deep tragedy of her central grief lets it swallow her up in everything she does, spreading it across each faction of Wildwood in the process. We love a villain that has more shades than just down the barrel evil, and Alexandra has as much deep sadness within her backstory of succumbing to dark magic as she does purely terrifying ones of unleashing her deep-rooted pain onto others. All of these elements melded together make for such an enriching narrative that knows the familiar beats of precious dark fantasies to play while being able to combine its own layers of heartfelt poignancy surrounding our response to loss of a loved one or the magic that once made us.
It goes without saying that the animation work that went into Wildwood is simply tremendous in just how much heart and soul went into each frame, but from a technical perspective, even that feels like underselling it. Every film that Laika has handcrafted has its own distinct visual flavor from ParaNorman and Coraline’s more horror based elements, the wondrous origami animated segments of Kubo and The Two Strings, they all have their own distinctive flavors within the realm of stop-motion. Wildwood is no different opting for the sheer spectacle of fantasy battles that are within true legend cinematically. You can feel every ounce of grit and puppetry that went into the creation of every movement and while there of course exist digital touch ups in the craft alongside the animation, it still remains endlessly beautiful to watch.
The battles themselves, particularly the final one throughout the film’s entire third act, is truly unfathomable, leaving you dumbfounded at just how they went about crafting every piece of it by hand, flowing with such seamless exhilaration when viewing it all in motion. It’s just as mesmerizing as it is shockingly brutal as the film features straight up stabbings in the head and dismemberments on screen, making the stakes feel all the more palpable and Wildwood’s endless ambition all the more invigorating.
At the beginning of my fan event screening for the film, director Travis Knight spoke about the 16 years it took to make the film before it began, and interestingly enough the length of making the film being similar to that of raising a child only a few years before entering adulthood feels synonymous to entirety of Wildwood itself. Wildwood is a breathtaking piece of artistry that finds the magic within both its fictional characters and its viewing audience in a sweeping ode to fantasy that’s as endlessly sprawling as it is deeply riveting. It’s certainly not without flaw but it’s ultimately a truly striking reminder that the sheer beauty of hand-made art is its own type of precious magic that should never be taken for granted, and it will stand as one of the most marvelous feats ever produced within the medium.
