Through the Trees: WILDWOOD

Wildwood is Laika’s first movie in nearly a decade. It’s a suitably grand return. This 131-minute stop-motion animated fantasy is a stunning work of creativity and craftsmanship. Sometimes, watching dozens of characters moving through a complicated action sequence in a highly-detailed environment one simply has to sit astonished at what these artists can accomplish one frame at a time. Laika’s filmmakers first made a name for themselves with entertaining fables with shadowy edges, charming humor, and family-friendly thrills like Coraline and ParaNorman. Their latest is their most ambitious yet, an epic adaptation of a thick children’s novel by Colin Meloy. It is also about children, and it’s sure to delight and terrify mature ones in the audience in equal measure. But it’s not made with children in mind, particularly. It’s simply a robust and densely detailed story sculpted with care for anyone who likes a good yarn. It’s one of those dark and melancholic and violent stories about growing up and discovering that the world is scary and complicated, fractious and unresolved. And it’s about discovering that, even though there is such darkness in the world, it’s also a place of kindness, solidarity, and magic. 

Said magic is found not merely in fantasy worlds of magic and wonder, but in the transferable qualities of heroism and love that the heroes bring back to their real world. The movie follows Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), an ordinary girl in Portland, Oregon, who has the misfortune of witnessing her toddler brother stolen by a swarm of crows. She and a dorky classmate (Jacob Tremblay) chase them into a mysterious deep forest realm where they encounter a society of birds and wolves, bandits and witches (and voices including Carey Mulligan, Angela Bassett, Charlie Day and Mahershala Ali). It happens to be in the middle of conflict. There they’ll find allies who want to help find the baby, and forces of danger that want to manipulate them. Sorting out which are which is part of the delight and tension as the movie goes from a warren of wolves in Napoleonic uniforms to a mansion populated by clothed animal servants of a sniveling human governor to an enormous magic tree. Along the way they also find a city of self-governing birds, an ivy-covered altar hidden in ancient ruins, far from the eccentric streets of Portland to which they hope to return. Those are as lovingly detailed down to every perfectly placed brick. All told, this fantasy is a distinctly American mythos—no Middle Earth or Narnia or Redwall with its Old Europe stylings. It’s a Pacific Northwest fantasy of foggy forest and muddy cliffs, indigenous secrets and outsiders intruding. 

This sturdy fantasy plot allows for the flourishing of craft. The design has wholly convincing spaces. The characters move through them with fluid animation and a real emotionality to their looks, be they human or owl or rat or dog or rabbit. The look and feel will be recognizable to anyone who’s seen director Travis Knight and screenwriter Chris Butler’s earlier movies. There’s something comforting about the Laika house style. There’s the tangible feeling of puppets and dioramas, but there’s a fluidity to their 3D-printed micro-expressions and patient posing augmented with digital effects. The camera and the story moves so smoothly, with characters whose emotions are so legible and evocative. There are moments where I was so swept up in the experience that I forgot I was watching animation. And then the knowledge would hit me with a scene of hundreds of characters moving, while the wind rustles the leaves and the grass, and a variety of smoke and light floats through the scene. Such complexity pulled off with such ease is the Laika way, all in service of a story overflowing with imagination and care.