In every interview about Wildwood, director and Laika head honcho Travis Knight has mentioned that the film has been a long time in the making. He first read Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’ novel in the summer of 2011, before it was even available the the public; that fantastical story of a preteen girl who becomes embroiled in a magical civil war after her baby brother’s abduction by a murder of crows captured Knight’s heart and he immediately purchased the film rights. At the time Laika had only released one film: Henry Selick’s Coraline. The team would spend the next decade crafting four feature films and becoming one of the most significant animation studios in the world, before they felt ready to tackle Meloy and Ellis’ story. There is no question that this was time well spent.
Anyone familiar with Laika’s body of work will recognise the foundations upon which Wildwood is built: an ordinary child enters an extraordinary world populated by strange and fantastic creatures. In this sense one can absolutely trace the lineage from Coraline to Wildwood via ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link, but there’s a sense of continual evolution rather than mere replication. With every film Laika grow in ambition and scale, learning new tricks and improving their processes. Wildwood represents their most challenging project to date in every sense, from the physical to the emotional, but what remains consistent is the dedication that clearly exists at every level.
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Prue McKeel (Payton Elizabeth Lee) could easily be friends with Coraline Jones. She’s a smart, sceptical 12-year-old who rolls her eyes at her overprotective crunchy hipster parents (Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson) and dotes on her baby brother Mac. Her nerdy classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) thinks she’s the coolest girl in the world, but Prue would rather be on her own. After an act of parental defiance leads to her brother’s kidnapping, Prue and Curtis end up in the magical realm of Wildwood, typically hidden from non-magical eyes. Here they discover a civil war is brewing, with the dowager governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) attempting to extend her control over the land at the expense of its native inhabitants. It turns out Mac is part of her scheme – but not if Prue has any say in the matter.
The name Laika has become synonymous with a level of intricate craft (alongside Aardman they’re essentially the biggest players in the stop-motion game) which is all on display here. Every tiny detail is a marvel, from the seven-inch rat puppet Septimus (voiced by Awkwafina) to the sprawling sets inspired by Oregon’s dense forestry. There is no question that countless hours of love and passion have gone into physically crafting this world, turning the imaginary into reality so seamlessly it’s often hard to believe that you are watching physical puppets painstakingly manipulated by human hands over six years. Even with this in mind it’s difficult to truly comprehend, particularly during Wildwood’s climactic battle scene – think The Two Towers’ Isengard with coyotes instead of orcs – which ranks as one of the year’s most exhilarating film moments in any form.
This visual spectacle is complemented by Chris Butler’s elegant adaptation, marrying the magic of Meloy’s novel with Laika’s trademark sense of humour and heart. It’s no mean feat to translate a sprawling 600-page book into a two-hour film, but Butler makes it look easy, and this is Laika’s most mature outing to date, peppered with surprising moments of violence and raw emotion. Yet these beats always feel earned thanks to a screenplay that is grounded by its strong central characters, brought to life by an exceptional voice cast.
Over the past few years, in part thanks to continued rallying by Guillermo del Toro, animation has become increasingly visible as a form rather than a genre, and particularly one thriving well beyond the safety of Hollywood’s major studios. Laika have always been cited as an example of what’s possible within animation when artists are given the time and resources to create, and Wildwood is their greatest testament to that ethos; a film born not of boardroom meetings and business forecasts but pure desire to create something beautiful. Taking inspiration from the masters of fantasy – Tolkien, Le Guin, Pratchett et al – the Laika team have crafted a breathtaking work here with human stakes and fantastical imagery that serves as a swift riposte to any narrow-minded folk who would dismiss animation as child’s play.
