by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Travis Knight
CAST: Carey Mulligan, Jake Johnson, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Mahershala Ali
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 99% Certified Fresh
PLOT: A young girl’s search for her kidnapped brother kicks off a gripping fantasy adventure in the forbidding forests outside of Portland, Oregon.
Wow. Just…WOW. Wildwood, the newest entry from director Travis Knight and Laika, the studio behind Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), pulls out all the stops and delivers the first stop-motion fantasy adventure epic. The first trailers made it look like a loose retread of 1986’s Labyrinth, with a young girl in search of her baby brother who was kidnapped by shadowy, magical forces. I was wrong. Wildwood should be remembered as one of the best fantasy films ever made in any medium.
(Also, just in passing, please note, it earns its PG-13 rating. Littler kids are likely to be traumatized by some of the visuals, as well as the numerous gruesome onscreen deaths. You have been warned.)
After a grim prologue involving the suicide of what appears to be a primitive automaton, we meet the modern-day McKeel family: Mom, Dad, Prue, and baby boy Mac. After numerous light-hearted, but still portentous, warnings to not leave the house with Mac and especially to stay away from the dense woods bordering their home in Portland, Oregon, Prue does exactly that, bumping into a nerdy acquaintance, Curtis, along the way. In a scene right out of Hitchcock, a playground gradually fills with large crows in a series of clever edits. This murder of crows swoops down in a cloud of caws and claws, grabs baby Mac, and soars away into the forest. Prue gives chase with Curtis in tow, and when she arrives at the edge of the forest, something curious happens: the trees part to reveal a path after some blood from Prue’s hand, cut during her pursuit, touches an ivy plant.
What follows is a spectacular adventure that incorporates all the best aspects of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling…along with any other fantasy writer who uses initials for their first name. Prue finds herself in a magical world where talking animals live side-by-side with humans. (Wolves, for example, are soldiers, though they’re not always the brightest bulbs in the box.) The land is divided into principalities, each ruled by a different species of animal, some of which will help Prue with her quest and others who will stop at nothing to prevent it.
The riot of diversity in this world was a constant source of amazement for me, especially considering everything was made with stop-motion animation. I won’t get into the technical details (I’ll assume most of you know what stop-motion is and how time-consuming it is), but that fact alone makes Wildwood nothing short of miraculous. If it doesn’t win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature of 2026, it will be a grave miscarriage of justice.
For the entire running time (it’s also the longest stop-motion feature ever made), I felt a nostalgic echo of the great fantasy adventures from my childhood. Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal (1982), The Secret of NIMH (1982), Willow (1988)…these were movies that had great stories, yes, but they strove to present unforgettable images to go along with their stories. Wildwood isn’t content just to show us massive flocks of birds – in stop-motion! – or other fantastical creatures. We also get a massive battle between two armies that plays and feels exactly like something out of The Lord of the Rings. We get a dynamic, tragic story of a mother’s loss and the lengths to which she’ll go to find her son. We get a surprise twist regarding Prue’s little brother.
And the entire time, that stunning animation is on display. I had thought Kubo and the Two Strings would remain the high-water mark for stop-motion films for decades, but I was wrong. Wildwood tops it, in terms of spectacle and storytelling. It feels a little bit like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988): an astonishing technical feat that could be duplicated in the future, but who would want to?
I should also mention the darker aspects of the story, specifically how it involves death in a number of ways throughout the movie. We get a suicide right at the top of the film. At one point, several prisoners are literally murdered in their cages by soldiers with guns. During the climactic battle, we aren’t shown a lot of especially gory details, but there is no mistake that both sides are out for blood and holding nothing back. There is at least one unmistakable decapitation. Wildwood remembers that, without high stakes, there can be no real suspense. And when the final denouement occurs between Prue and the enemy leader, I gasped the same as I did when poor Wash got skewered in Serenity (2005.) [If I ruined that for you, you need to watch more movies.]
So, seriously, please, pretty please, with a cherry on top: find a local theater that might still be playing Wildwood and go see it on the big screen. It is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. It is hands-down the best stop-motion film I’ve ever seen. It will be money well spent, I assure you.
