Coraline
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Coraline is a 2009 American stop-motion animated dark fantasy-horror film written and directed by Henry Selick, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Neil Gaiman. This film was animated by the team of Laika as its first feature film. The film was released in United States theaters on February 6, 2009 by Focus Features after a world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival. It won a few Annie Awards for "Best Music in an Animated Feature Production", "Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production" and "Best Production Design in an Animated Feature Production". It also was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Animated Feature" and the Golden Globe Award for "Best Animated Feature".
Plot
"While exploring her new home, a girl named Coraline (Dakota Fanning) discovers a secret door, behind which lies an alternate world that closely mirrors her own but, in many ways, is better. She rejoices in her discovery, until Other Mother (Teri Hatcher) and the rest of her parallel family try to keep her there forever. Coraline must use all her resources and bravery to make it back to her own family and life."
— Official Description
Coraline Jones is an 11-year-old girl whose family has just moved to Ashland, Oregon. For some reason, the landlady of the Pink Palace apartments is hesitant to let couples with children live there, but Coraline's family moves in nonetheless. Coraline soon meets a boy named Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat and finds a stray cat. Wybie warns her that the last three children who lived at the Pink Palace apartments mysteriously disappeared, but she shrugs him off. That same day, Coraline finds an old well that was sealed off years ago.
Coraline's life is rather miserable, as her parents are very neglectful and even rude towards her and she has no friends left. Wybie brings her a button-eyed ragdoll that looks suspiciously like her. The doll quickly leads Coraline towards a strange locked door in the apartment. Coraline finds the key that opens the door and sneaks into it later that night. When she does, she finds herself in a parallel world that looks just like her normal world, except all the inhabitants have buttons for eyes, just like the ragdoll.
Coraline meets the "Other Mother", who explains that they're in the "Other World", a dimension where unfortunate children can live a happier version of their previous lives. The stray cat finds Coraline in the Other World and reveals that he can talk and has some degree of control over the pocket dimension. He tries to warn Coraline about the Other Mother, but Coraline ignores him. Coraline finds herself greatly enjoying the Other World, becoming obsessed with going there as often as possible and even contemplating staying there forever. However, it isn't long before she starts becoming suspicious about the Other Mother like the cat said after "Other Wybie" and "Other Father" subtly try to warn her.
Coraline wants to go back to the real world, but the Other Mother refuses to let her go. Coraline stumbles into the ghosts of three children that disappeared long ago. The ghosts explain that the Other Mother is actually an evil witch called "The Beldam", who lures unhappy children into the Other World by sending ragdolls to spy on them and transforms the Other World into an ideal world of happiness. When the children become happy enough that they want to stay forever, the Beldam replaces their eyes with buttons and devours their souls. The Other Wybie helps Coraline escape back to the real world, but is caught and killed by the Beldam, who then hangs his clothes from a flagpole to taunt Coraline with.
Back in the real world, Coraline finds that her parents have been kidnapped by the Beldam in order to force her to go back to the Other World. The stray cat fears that the Beldam is too powerful for Coraline, so he suggests that Coraline outsmart the Beldam instead. Coraline challenges the Beldam to a game, which the Beldam agrees to: If Coraline can find the souls of the three dead children within a time limit, the Beldam will release Coraline, her parents and all the previous victims, but if time runs out, Coraline must remain in the Other World and let the Beldam replace her eyes with buttons. Coraline is able to find the three souls, but the Beldam refuses to accept defeat and reveals her true form, an arachnoid-like monster, as the Other World begins to collapse. Coraline tricks the Beldam into unlocking the door and, upon finding her parents trapped in a snow globe, throws the stray cat at the Beldam's face, blinding her. After grabbing the snow globe, Coraline makes it back home and locks the door to the Other World, just as her parents walk in with no memory of what happened. Unbeknownst to Coraline, one of the Beldam's hands is able to sneak through the door.
That night, the ghosts of the Beldam's victims thank Coraline for helping them pass on to the afterlife, but warn her that the Beldam hasn't been truly defeated yet, as the Key to the Other World is still at the Pink Palace. Coraline and the stray cat take the key to the old well, planning to toss it down there, but before they can, the Beldam's severed hand grabs Coraline and attempts to drag her back into the Other World. Fortunately, Wybie arrives and destroys the hand by dropping a large rock on it. Coraline and Wybie then toss both the hand's remains and the key down the well and seal it up, ensuring that the Beldam will never come back.
The next day, Coraline learns that Wybie's grandmother is the older sister of the Beldam's most recent victim, which is why she refused to let children live at the Pink Palace Apartments. Coraline tells Wybie's grandmother about her adventure and assures her that the Beldam has been dealt with.
While the Pink Palace's residents are having a party, the stray cat walks past a signpost and disappears, suggesting that there may still be other entrances to the Other World remaining.
Why It Rocks
- For the first time ever, it jump-started the stop-motion company, Laika.
- Just like the novel, the film is anything but pure shock value, as it has a genuine and robust plot, lore, and message.
- It is extremely faithful to the original novel, and even expands on some parts. For example, it introduces Wyborn (or Wybie, as he's often called), a geeky but nervous 11-year-old grandson of Coraline's landlady. He was also created for the film in order to make Coraline's character appear more social to the audience, and his creation certainly succeeded in that.
- The stop-motion animation is wonderful and heavily detailed, especially by 2009 and Laika's standards.
- The atmosphere has a creepy and cool look, which fits the mood of the story perfectly. The backgrounds are also absolutely dazzling. From being dark and bleak to geometrical, they all look completely and utterly breathtaking.
- The Other Father produces a great song on the piano, "They Might Be Giants."
- The movie has a lot of likable characters, most notably the main protagonist, Coraline herself. Wybie is also entertaining, as is the stray cat.
- Speaking of Coraline, she goes through a great deal of tangible and strong character development over the course of the events of the film. She starts off as a bit of a spoiled brat, but only because she feels ignored by her parents due to them becoming so busy after moving into the Pink Palace due to everything going on at the time that they couldn't make much time for her. But after getting stranded in the other world, she learns to become more selfless and courageous in order to survive and protect those she cares about.
- Coraline and Wybie's interactions with each other are entertaining, as well as having amazing chemistry.
- The Other Mother is a very threatening, scary and amazing antagonist. Especially in the climax where it's revealed that she tricks kids into thinking that she genuinely loves them so that she can trap them in the other world, not to mention the scene where she turned into a giant spider to fight Coraline.
- The soundtrack by Bruno Coulais is beautiful.
- There are lots of nice cameo in this movie, such as the director Henry Selick, George Selick, Jerome Ranft and Christopher Murrie-Green.
- Amazing voice acting. Dakota Fanning in particular does a great job voicing Coraline. The same can be said about the other voice actors in the film, who also fit their roles well, but it's extremely impressive given how young she was at the time.
- Much like The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, it shows how Henry Selick has amazing skills as a director.
- The movie has a fairly suspenseful story with many great twists and turns. Especially the reveal of the Other Mother's true identity and intentions as the Beldam.
- The ending (which has the final remains of the Beldam, her still-moving hand, return, but Coraline and Wybie dispose of it by dropping a rock on top of it before sealing it's remnants into a bag and dropping it into a well) is very great and unexpected.
- Although the horror factor is somewhat toned down from the original novel, the film remains incredibly loyal to it and has the charm and creepiness as well. The changes it makes from the original book also make sense and are interesting, such as the addition of Wybie. Neil Gaiman being heavily involved in the production also helped.
- Certain lines and moments are pretty funny without trying too hard to make the audience laugh, such as when Coraline is in the Other World and asks the stray cat why he can suddenly talk, to which he answers "I just can!".
- The scene where Coraline sees that her parents aren't home is emotional and touching, especially when Coraline sets up pillows to look like her parents and says goodnight to them before she starts crying.
Dark and Scary Qualities
- Some moments are too scary, frightening and inappropriate for a PG-rated family movie, such as:
- The Beldam sewing buttons over peoples' eyes.
- The infamous "One, Two, Three" scene, where the Other Mother transforms into a grotesque version of herself, not helping is that there is full on crackling during her transformation.
- The Other Wybie having his mouth stitched into a permanent grin after the Beldam catches him looking unhappy.
- The Other Miss Forcible and the Other Miss Spink doing a performance whilst wearing revealing clothing.
- The Other Father complimenting the Other Mother's "golden chicken breast", to which she responds with an "oh, you!" wave.
- At a few points, the Mom says that Mr. Bobinsky is drunk.
- There are a few errors, though they may be hard to notice. For instance, at one point, the Other Father presses the "F" key on the piano when the sound is really an "F#". There's also a part where Coraline drops her notebook and, in one shot, you can see the wires holding it up.
- Wybie doesn't contribute much to the film, though this can be attributed to the fact that he didn't exist in the original novel.
Reception
Coraline has received wide acclaim from both critics and moviegoers alike for its vivid stop-motion animation, engaging story and likable characters. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 268 reviews, with an average rating of 7.81/10. The website's critical consensus reads "With its vivid stop-motion animation combined with Neil Gaiman's imaginative story, Coraline is a film that's both visually stunning and wondrously entertaining". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "a beautiful film about several nasty people", as well as "nightmare fodder for children, however brave, under a certain age."
In retrospective years, it has amassed a strong cult following.
Videos
Trivia
- This film was banned in China for a brief time, according to a Quora post.
- Originally, the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novella "Coraline" was conceived as a live action movie starring Dakota Fanning. Eventually, the filmmakers decided to make it a stop-motion animated film and asked Fanning to voice the title character.
- It took 10 crew members working between three to four months to make the 28 Coraline puppets created for the film. In addition, 130 sets were built across 52 different stages - the largest number ever for a stop-motion film - and the film took 18 months to shoot, following two years of pre-production.
- At one hour and forty minutes long, this was the longest stop-motion film, until Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), also made by Laika.
- The first animated film to be released by Focus Features.
- Despite the movie being released in 2009, it was produced by 2008, according to the credits.
- At one point, there were plans to use two different animation techniques for the film: stop motion for the real world, and CGI for the Other World. However, when tests of this approach were attempted, the stop motion looked much more visually interesting than the CG, making the dull world Coraline leaves seem much more interesting than the thrilling world she enters. They tried a switch, with CG for the real world and stop motion for the Other World, but that didn't look right either, so they settled on using entirely stop motion.
- Director Henry Selick met author Neil Gaiman just as Gaiman was finishing the novel Coraline, and given that Gaiman was a fan of Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas, he invited him to make a possible film adaptation. As Selick thought a direct adaptation would lead to "maybe a 47-minute movie", his screenplay had some expansions, such as the creation of Wybie, who was not present in the original novel. When looking for a design away from that of most animation, Selick discovered the work of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and invited him to become the concept artist.
They Might Be Giants Lyrics
Making up a song about Coraline
She's a peach, she's a doll, she's a pal of mine
She's as cute as a button
In the eyes of everyone who ever laid their eyes on Coraline
When she comes around exploring
Mom and I will never ever make it boring
Our eyes will be on Coraline
External Links
Coraline at the Internet Movie Database
Coraline on Rotten Tomatoes
Coraline on Metacritic
Coraline on Letterboxd