Unmissable “Wildwood” brings a new standard for stop-motion animation

“Wildwood” follows Prue, a determined teenager who enters a magical forest portal after a murder of crows abducts her baby brother. Her rescue mission becomes a battle larger than she realised when she learns that her brother is in the hands of a powerful sorceress.

Director Travis Knight and his team at LAIKA have been developing a film adaptation of Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s “Wildwood” novels since 2011. The book series introduces a magical fantasy world where humans and animals rule their respective colonies, and witchcraft comes into play. Think the scale of “The Chronicles of Narnia” combined with the adventurous world of “Spirited Away,” and you get “Wildwood,” or at least what the film is going for.

It is a massive film with an even larger production, 15 years in the making. When Knight started on “Wildwood,” Barack Obama was in his first term as President of the United States. Since then, LAIKA has released four films: “ParaNorman” (2012), “The Boxtrolls” (2014), “Kubo and the Two Strings” (2016) and “Missing Link” (2019).

“Wildwood” is heavily marketed for how it was made, and it earns the right to. Seeing the film in all its finished glory, you can feel the extensive work that went into it. It is distinctly tactile, up until the point where the technology allows such seamless, smooth animation that it no longer feels like stop-motion. The big battle sequences, reminiscent of “The Lord of the Rings,” go all out on the number of elements serving a single frame, and it is breathtaking how they pulled it off.

Beneath the spectacle, the film strikes a balance with great character work. Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) goes through different stages of physical and emotional obstacles, and by the very end, a devastating final reveal somehow becomes reflective of the labour of love of the production crew behind it. The bandit leader Brendan (Mahershala Ali) and the villainous sorceress Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) also have strong character arcs that culminate in big swings in the last half.

“Wildwood” is unmissable animation, setting a new standard for how stop-motion can be produced and explored in the future. It could benefit from more time spent expanding its mythology and a few side characters, but it is a strong film on its own. 

“Wildwood” is now showing in cinemas across New Zealand.

Featured images from Kismet Movies.