Wildwood, the new film from the Portland-based Laika studio behind Coraline, is an engaging family adventure with a distinctively crafted stop-motion animation style. Directed by Laika's lead animator Travis Knight and written by Chris Butler, it is based on the bestselling book by Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy, a member of The Decemberists, whose tour poster appears in the film. The result is a forthright, exuberant, good-natured and old-fashioned children's tale that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien might have recognised, exploring the mysterious glory of a quest and the fear and wish-fulfilment of confronting secret forces unknown to grownups.
A magical forest in modern Portland
The setting is modern-day Portland, Oregon, a groovy city whose hipster-ish stores, including a coffee shop called Dripster, and Woke 1.0 signage are affectionately mocked. The film focuses on a huge forest park next to the city, mythologised as the impassable wilderness or “wildwood”, where strange creatures, fairytale nobility and wisecracking talking animals reputedly dwell, unknown to the city's human residents.
Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a 12-year-old girl whose parents (Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine) are amiable hippies who believe in natural forces and benign magic. She has a baby brother, Mac, whom she must look after one day, pushing him in a stroller and enduring the company of nerdy classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), who has a crush on her.
A crow abduction and a parallel world
Their day is disrupted when a murder of crows gathers with Hitchcockian menace in a play area, swoops down and carries Mac off to their forest domain. Plucky but terrified, Prue and Curtis give chase and enter the dark forest, discovering a parallel world populated by loquacious beasts and oppressed humans. Its rule is divided between the supercilious and incompetent governor (Marc Evan Jackson) and the evil dowager governess, voiced with relish by Carey Mulligan, who commands a redcoat army of coyotes.
The governess harbours a wrenching sadness from an awful loss and a tragic cover-up, shown in the opening section. Prue and Curtis, though separated by the action, come together for a showdown with this wicked witch of the forest and a reckoning with the Wildwood's bandit leader and freedom fighter Brendan (Mahershala Ali).
A robust animation style
The stop-motion animation has, as with Coraline, a robust and pleasing directness, offering a more organic character and physical immediacy than Pixar's digital look, to which it makes a welcome change. The narrative does not deliver a satisfyingly clear motive for the governess's plan, and the story lacks the scary punch of Coraline, except in the uncanny opening sequence. But it is not that kind of story.
Wildwood screened at the London film festival; it is out on 22 October in Australia and 23 October in the UK and US.
