Buffalo Film: Film from makers of ‘Coraline’ is most ambitious yet

By Anna Gagliano
(Images courtesy of Laika Entertainment – © Laika Entertainment)

Every hero’s journey has to start with some sort of dramatic event or knowledge gained – Luke hears Leia’s plea, Aladdin rubs the lamp, a tornado rips through Kansas.

For Wildwood’s heroes, Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), the beginning of their journey(s) is marked with a murder – specifically, a murder of crows, one that swoops down from the sky and whisks away Prue’s baby brother, Mac. From there, the adventure through Portland and the fictional Impassable Wilderness takes off.

Wildwood is the sixth film from LAIKA, a stop-motion animation company based in Portland, Ore., and led by Travis Knight, a proponent of the arts and son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight. It’s based on the 2011 novel of the same name, written by another Portlander, Colin Meloy, who is also the frontman for The Decemberists.

You might recognize the LAIKA name from their other stop-motion films – some of which have become contemporary cult classics, despite lackluster numbers at the box office, like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings.

The film has been in development for 16 years and is LAIKA’s most ambitious project to date, with over 1000 artists, technicians and animators contributing. The passion and time poured into the project are evident, from the intricately designed sets (some of which are replicas of Portland institutions, like Voodoo Donut) to the expressive characters, for which over 220 puppets were created. Characters that were later given a voice by a star-studded cast, including Angela Bassett, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, and more. The combination of artistry, vision and magic has created the longest stop-motion feature film ever produced.

Knight is LAIKA’s CEO, but also a former lead animator with the company, as well as the director of Kubo and now Wildwood. It’s clear that he loves a good story surrounding family, friendship and the magic, both real and presumed unreal, within our world.

Prue spends the majority of Wildwood rejecting the notion of magic, from a mushy comment from her dad and Curtis’ obsession with D&D, to talking avian royalty and plants that respond to commands. After she and Curtis charge into the Impassable Wilderness (via bike and Radio Flyer) after crow-napped Mac, though, she finds it harder and harder to deny its existence.

This film is all about pushing its characters. Prue, headstrong and sure of the world, is forced to confront her indifference toward the strange and rely on the help of others as she desperately searches for her baby brother, while the timid and clueless Curtis must find his own strength and bravery when he’s taken by coyote soldiers to join the ranks of the Dowager Governess Alexandra’s (Mulligan) army and uncovers her plan involving Mac. Wildwood itself is being pushed to the brink; its five factions are constantly fighting, save for the peaceful folk of the Northwood.

What happens next, after Prue and Curtis are set on their separate paths through the forest, is roughly 2 hours of pure, unadulterated adventure film. The visuals become mind-boggling when you realize how they must have been shot, which left me in the theater speechless over moments like Prue’s flight on the back of the Avian Principality’s General (Bassett) and the 20-minute battle sequence between Alexandra’s coyote army and Prue, Curtis, the Bandit clan and other Wildwood residents in the film’s final act, a first of its kind for stop motion.

I’m intentionally being a bit vague here, but that’s because I believe the story of Wildwood is one you need to consume and digest for the first time in a theatre seat. So many hands and hearts worked to create this modern marvel of film that it would be a waste for it to go the way of past LAIKA films.

I must admit, I’m incredibly biased – Coraline has been one of my favorite movies since it was released in 2010, and I’ve followed LAIKA’s projects ever since. Add my general stop-motion obsession on top of that (do NOT ask me how many times I’ve seen Rankin/Bass’ Rudolph), I’m definitely the target audience for Wildwood. But I think, despite not knowing who’s reading these words at this moment, you are, too.

You are a person who deserves rich, original stories crafted by people who truly care about the art they are creating. You deserve to join Prue and Curtis and leave knowing you were part of their odyssey through the Impassable Wilderness and Wildwood.

Wildwood is something that could only have been made by humans, and Knight wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by his stance on Artificial Intelligence, which he shared with Variety:

“Technology is not useful when it takes the place of the artist, and that’s the concern with generative AI … we have an issue because the computer cannot speak about humanity at all. It doesn’t know what it feels like … There is something special about the human touch. There is something beautiful about humanity. And that’s one thing that stop motion represents. Stop-motion represents humanity at its finest creativity, emotion, care, devotion, time.

“That’s something that AI could never do because a computer has never felt anything. It’s never felt loss or love or pain, and that’s something that people can feel and that’s something you feel in something that was made by people.”

Go see this Wildwood and get that magic and humanity from a film that you deserve.

Wildwood is rated PG-13 and contains intense fantasy violence as well as themes of death, grief and suicide.