Wildwood is in theaters on October 23.
There’s something wondrous about the transportive power of stop-motion animated films when they’re executed at the standard that Laika sets for themselves, and wonder is certainly the name of the game in Wildwood. Adapted from the first novel in Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’ Wildwood Chronicles, Wildwood sees director Travis Knight and the craftspeople at Laika turning in a staggeringly beautiful and surprisingly dark fantasy adventure that boasts exciting action, enchanting and enchanted natural settings, and talking woodland creatures with jobs… and that’s all before the characters leave Portland to journey into Wildwood!
Wildwood is most impressive in its scope. As the new recordholder for the longest-ever stop-motion animated film, Knight luxuriates in building out the mythology of Meloy and Ellis’ novels onscreen. As 13-year-old Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and her classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) find themselves on a mission into the magical forest realm of Wildwood to save Prue’s kidnapped baby brother Mac, the intricate web of societies, races, and systems that prop up the setting are endlessly fascinating to keep track of thanks in large part to just how gorgeous it all looks. Laika’s films always push the boundaries of what’s possible for stop-motion animation, and the jaw-dropping artistry on display in Wildwood sees them doing it again. From the intricately authentic rendering of Portland, through each of the different domains of the massive, mystical forest, Wildwood is fathomless in its attention to fine detail.
Long stretches of the film achieve such a sense of immersion that, at its most effective, it’s easy to forget that Wildwood is a stop-motion film at all, a sensation that’s even more impressive when taking into account the wide array of fantasy trappings that Wildwood deploys.
The nature-centric magic and anthropomorphic characters Prue and Curtis come up against will no doubt feel familiar to any fans of portal fantasies like Spirited Away, Labyrinth or The Chronicles of Narnia (not to mention Laika’s own Coraline), but Knight leans into the storytelling economy afforded to him by those archetypes with confidence. The “just go with it” style of his approach to what he chooses to detail about the history of Wildwood leaves moments where the movie breezes through exposition feeling pretty inoffensive, especially in light of just how fully-realized the world feels by the end of the movie. Through it all, the stakes of the story feel very high thanks to the quickly cascading conflict Prue and Curtis’ actions set off once they cross into the wilderness. Losses feel real, setbacks have consequences and people die in this movie, and with some amount of frequency at that. At times, it’s surprising just how far Knight is willing to push the envelope for what could look on the surface like a kid-friendly romp. Sure, nothing here approaches the hellish nightmare fuel present in the R-rated, Phil Tippett-directed Mad God, but make no mistake: Wildwood more than earns its PG-13 rating.
That doesn’t stop character motivations from being occasional stumbling blocks for Wildwood, though. As fantastical and well-conceived as Wildwood’s world is, protagonist Prue does sometimes feel lost in the shuffle. Prue’s a very modern 13-year-old girl who bristles against her granola mom and dad (Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson) and takes the full brunt of responsibility for losing her brother, giving the character plenty of weight to have to shoulder as more and more bravery and pluck is required of her. Peyton Elizabeth Lee’s performance is energetic and dynamic enough to keep Prue likable, but the script doesn’t find much room for her to be more specifically defined by anything other than the wrongs she’s trying to right. That may be partially by design, maybe to let younger audience members project themselves into her adventure, but it does leave Prue feeling less memorable than the world she’s adventuring through.
The tabletop RPG-loving Curtis, still stuck on hot chocolate when his peers have moved on to coffee, plays out an expected “zero to hero” arc, with Jacob Tremblay handling the character’s comedic timing well. Wildwood’s story does take Curtis away from Prue for a lot of the movie, and the pacing tends to drag when we check back in with him and the heroic bandits he crosses paths with in enemy territory. While the record-breaking 131-minute runtime more than justifies itself from a purely visual standpoint, plot detours like this do occasionally leave Wildwood feeling a little long in the tooth.
Growing her power within Wildwood is Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), a governess of the South Wood whose grief coming out of the movie’s shockingly macabre opening scene drives her towards equally dark choices as the story goes. Alexandra’s relationship to her grief is far more interesting and believable than her machinations to quell it, but Mulligan’s quavering, edgy performance is a consistent highlight. Some late effort is made to draw parallels between Alexandra and Prue’s parents, which could’ve made Alexandra an even more compelling antagonist, but those connections don’t feel properly seeded into the early scenes to be satisfying to consider later on. From Alexandra’s grief, though, Knight does have occasion to produce some of Wildwood’s most evocative imagery, and those gothic touches are a welcome contrast to the bright, teeming life which makes up the majority of the movie’s visual identity.
What’s left to be desired by the main players is more than made up for by Wildwood’s excellently cast supporting roster of magical creatures and heroes. Mahershala Ali and Amandla Stenberg? Badass bandits! Richard E. Grant? An owl king named Owl Rex! Tom Waits? Rage-filled coyote soldier! Charlie Day? Cowardly turncoat coyote soldier! From everyone as big as Angela Bassett’s giant eagle General to as small as Awkwafina’s spunky rat Septima, the voice cast is a key aspect of Wildwood’s personality. The color each of these characters add into the mix, especially the ways the animal characters’ more base instincts peek through in their personalities, does as much to create a sense of place as any of the sun-dappled valleys or ivy-ridden ruins that Prue and Curtis traverse.
As Prue and Curtis attempt to outwit Alexandra’s forces, Wildwood’s action is breathlessly staged. The early kidnapping of the baby brother Mac by a murder of Alexandra’s crows and the chase that ensues hints at some of the gonzo camera work that’s to follow, and once the real world’s in the rear view mirror, Knight draws from every corner of his meticulously-populated frames to add a surprising twist to a fight, or to increase the danger of being caught or killed. Knight also has a pretty judicious eye for when to lock the camera into a more grounded style of coverage, and when to let it off the chain. All that excitement is very effectively supported by composer Dario Marianelli’s score, a lively orchestral bedrock which is alternatingly lead by either folk string arrangements or more modern guitar sounds depending on the environment.