I’m sorry to interrupt the Halloween week horror programming, but it would be negligent not to write about a unique theatrical experience that may pass you by soon: the extravagant stop motion fantasy WILDWOOD. Director Travis Knight (KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS), writer Chris Butler (director of PARANORMAN) and the studio Laika (CORALINE) live up to their usual high standard of entertainment while aggressively pushing the envelope of what can be done in this medium.

I’m referring more to its scale than its subject matter. It’s a PG-13 movie, it has some stuff that might be too much for most little kids, but it’s basically a young people movie, based on a book by Colin Meloy of the band The Decemberists, illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis. I don’t know anything about any of that, but I can appreciate a LABYRINTH type going-into-a-fantasy-world-to-rescue-the-kidnapped-baby adventure as much as the next dork. This is a good version of that for a couple of reasons, the biggest and most obvious being that it’s maybe the most technically ambitious stop motion movie ever made, just staggering to look at if you appreciate the art form.

This is a studio with a near perfect track record – I’d consider CORALINE, PARANORMAN, THE BOXTROLLS and KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS all classics, with MISSING LINK being perfectly fine – and on one viewing I don’t think it’s my favorite of them. But for many I think it will be because it’s just so impressive in its constant pushing of the limits of animation, while always centering the heart and humanity of its seventh-grade-girl coming-of-age story.

It’s about thirteen-year-old Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee, CARVED) of Portland, Oregon, who’s taking care of her baby brother Mac when he gets kidnapped by a murder of crows. She chases them through the city on her bike, draggging an annoying nerd classmate she ran into named Curtis (Jacob Tremblay, BEFORE I WAKE) in a wagon. The birds carry Mac out of town and into the woods, which the kids know as an off limits danger zone called “the Impassable Wilderness.” One of the reasons they’ve been taught to avoid it becomes clear when they’re spotted and chased by upright, talking coyotes wearing military uniforms.

Yeah, there’s a magical realism here. But part of Laika’s power is the sense of place they create through meticulous visual detail, tactile sets and props, and natural lighting (by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel [MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE RIGHT STUFF, FLY AWAY HOME]!). So although we know we’re looking at puppets and miniature models, we are grounded in the reality of the McKeel family life in stop motion Portland. In Laika movies I always find myself in awe of some mundane detail like the chrome detailing on a car or the tiles on a wall. Tiny things you know artists had to design, mold and assemble instead of just finding like you would on a normal movie. Here I love her mom (Maya Erskine, Mr. & Mrs. Smith)’s scraggly grey hairs, the unshaved neck hair under her dad (Jake Johnson, REDBELT)’s beard, the carton of rice milk (that doesn’t play as a joke), the buckles on Prue’s Mary Jane shoes, the tiny birthmark next to her left eye.

Laika is located outside of Portland, and made this as a love letter to their city. The montage set to “Portland” by Loretta Lynn warms the heart. There are a few famous locations that I knew, and the rest look so authentic I assume they must also be real. I noticed a street artist that seemed so specific I thought it must be a real person, and I later learned that the character in a keep-Portland-weird gag was an actual guy people in Portland would know.

Living in Seattle I’m sort of a neighbor of Portland. I haven’t been there enough, but really like the place. I didn’t know there was supposed to be a rivalry until I saw the movie PIG. My only grievance is against Voodoo Donuts for expanding to Seattle even though we have local chains Top Pot, Mighty-O and Dough Joy plus smaller operations all making great donuts that don’t have fuckin Fruit Loops and shit on them. (Voodoo is seen in WILDWOOD but I’m okay with it since it’s on their home turf, not carpetbagging.)

I’m a little envious of this tribute, but mostly moved. What must it be like to see your home immortalized in stop motion? It’s such a beautiful portrait, self-deprecating but loving. Yeah we have goofballs and hippies and too many sweaters and we don’t care what you say about it. Look at our streets, look at our coffee shops, look at how lovely it is in the fall. It makes you want to go there. (Maybe shrink down first.)

But mostly WILDWOOD takes place in the titular kingdom, a.k.a. the Impassable Woods, where Prue and Curtis become embroiled in the political tensions between the exiled “dowager governess” Alexandra (voiced by Carey Mulligan [DRIVE] but the puppet looks like Robin Wright Penn to me) and her coyote army, the Avian Principality (birds – but not affiliated with the crows), and the tribes of so-called bandits and mystics native to Wildwood. There’s also a puppet governor, lots of bureaucracy and rich animals and people who kinda suck. Most of the problems here stem from the tragic death of Alexandra’s son. She resorted to witchcraft and a clockwork duplicate to resurrect him, but that went poorly. Now she confuses Curtis for her son and wants to use Mac for a sacrifice. You know, fantasy book shit.

I won’t (and can’t) catalog all the characters of this world, but there’s a giant talking eagle voiced by Angela Bassett, a badass bandit voiced by Mahershala Ali, a coyote I didn’t realize was Tom Waits. Awkwafina voices a rat named Septima and I did recognize her voice but tip my cap to her for doing a performance and not seeming like the same comedy shtick she usually uses for animated characters (or maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ve only seen RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON).

This type of story that culminates in a huge battle and a bunch of magical destruction has been done to death in live action studio movies of the digital FX age, but never in stop motion. It didn’t seem possible. There is certainly plenty of compositing and additional FX involved, but seeing, for example, galloping horses and grappling in stop motion feels fresh. Jack Skellington never did a judo throw. And honestly this epic action stuff is the cherry on top of the sundae – the real treat is all the earlier scenes with dozens of characters in shots that I suspect really were done in camera. Or the visceral thrill of the high speed chase. Or little things like the way the coyotes leap onto all fours to run, or the realistic way Prue wobbles with gravity as she runs downhill.

I always think of my favorite part in KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE as this one shot where she’s depressed and drops face first onto her bed. Such a recognizable human moment most people wouldn’t think to, or be able to, re-create in drawings. I think they did an homage to that in WILDWOOD, and it’s okay because they’re always replenishing our surplus of grace notes. Great animators are sorcerers. I don’t know how they do it.

I think it’s mostly an accident, but this movie coming out at this time feels like something of a revolutionary act. It’s a celebration of things we love and don’t get enough of in 2026, and a pointed rejection of things we despise and are force fed. Though an adopter and advancer of many technologies, Knight has been vocally anti-generative-A.I., and WILDWOOD really feels like A.I.’s opposite. The medium is the message: that it’s beautiful to spend time, care and technology on creating something to be physical, finessed by hand, one frame at a time. Thoughtful by definition. To lovingly pay tribute to the places and people and culture of their beloved city (coincidentally one that has been caricatured and demonized in right wing propaganda). To demonstrate that rich nepo babies like Knight (the son of Ben Affleck’s character in AIR) could actually be using their money and connections to create beautiful artistic works that nobody else could, rather than using it to to terrorize the world. Or even just to make movies concerned with the bottom line. He’s MEGALOPOLISsing that shit, but with a movie more people will enjoy than MEGALOPOLIS.

I don’t know, I always hope the Laika movies are somehow profitable so that he doesn’t give up on them. But it’s even a more hopeful message if he’s losing money on them and just doesn’t care. If that’s not the case, he’s clearly not maximizing profits and stocks and shit like every other god damn thing in the world. Seems like a miracle in this day and age.

WILDWOOD also works as a rebuke of nostalgia and i.p. based filmmaking if you compare the quality of this book adaptation in development since the release of the book to the same director’s live action adaptation of my favorite childhood toy bullshit earlier this year. He tried two paths and clearly the harder one was the better one. Both flops, this one probly more than the other one, but I think guaranteed to live on in the way that, say, IRON GIANT has. Or CORALINE.

Admittedly I’m most in awe of it as a technical marvel, but I also think the story has some things to chew on in the way that some of the best fantasies and fairy tales do. There’s even plenty to say about Curtis, kind of a comic relief sidekick and the film’s most obnoxious character. This is used to comic effect (I like that first Prue and then the talking rat clearly find him annoying) and then they wisely temper him a little before he gets to be too much.

But there’s a real truth to this situation of two kids the same age but at different stages of growing up, and clashing over it. Curtis doesn’t understand that he’s overwhelming Prue with his enthusiasm for nerdy shit, he’s not self conscious in the way she’s beginning to be, or yearning for a more grown up life like she is. (She drinks espresso, he drinks hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles.)

Curtis feels the drive to be a “hero,” but not to imitate other ideas of manliness. He actually achieves heroism, first by making the coyotes chase him so Prue could escape to save her brother. Then there’s something to this monarch Alexandra asking him to kill for her, feeling that’s his value. He can’t stomach it like he can in his D&D and shit. It’s a nice challenge to our pop cultural worship of “warriors,” though possibly undermined by (spoiler) him later having to kill a coyote to save Prue. It’s portrayed as devastating, but necessary.

That’s just me talking about boy shit. It’s obviously Prue’s story, and she’s a really compelling character. Time will tell if women become attached to her the way some have to Coraline, but I’m guessing it’s yes. I like her sullen distance from her parents and nerd acquaintance, her annoyance at Curtis but willingness to apologize for it, her comical insistence on bringing her bike everywhere, her fashion sense (she has some really nice coats), her status as the rare fantasy heroine who goes home at the end and cries thinking about the tragic backstory of the evil queen. She’s a good kid.

I feel like I’ve said more than you want to hear about WILDWOOD, but only scratched the surface. Being a bit of a Curtis. Not everyone will love it as much as me, but then again most people I’ve talked to have loved it even more than me. At any rate it’s a special movie and if it sounds like your thing I encourage you to catch it on the big screen while you can. Why wait for the anniversary screenings?