10 / 10
Coraline is Laika’s first feature and one of the best films ever made for children, with the understanding that “for children” includes a willingness to frighten them. Henry Selick directed it. The film adapts Neil Gaiman’s 2002 novella. Dakota Fanning voices Coraline Jones, a young girl whose family has just moved to a new house in Oregon. Teri Hatcher voices both her real mother and the Other Mother, the button-eyed entity that lives behind a small door in the house and wants to keep Coraline forever.
Robert Bailey Jr. voices Wybie. John Hodgman voices the real and Other Father. Keith David voices the cat. Ian McShane and Jennifer Saunders voice the elderly upstairs neighbors. Dawn French voices Miss Forcible.
The film cost approximately sixty million dollars and made one hundred and twenty-five million worldwide. It was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar and lost to Up. It was probably the right call but doesn’t diminish Coraline’s achievement. The film is widely regarded as the most successful children’s horror film of the 2000s and the most artistically ambitious American stop-motion feature since The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The Horror
Coraline is frightening. The Other Mother begins as a charming alternate version of Coraline’s real mother. She cooks better. She listens more attentively. She’s a button-eyed warmth that the real mother lacks. The button eyes are the first warning. The second warning is that the Other Mother wants Coraline to let her sew buttons onto Coraline’s eyes too, so that she can stay with the Other Mother forever. The reveal that the Other Mother is a child-devouring entity who has done this before is paced precisely.
The audience figures it out at approximately the same speed as Coraline does.
The film doesn’t soften any of this. The Other Mother’s final form is a skeletal needle-fingered horror that pursues Coraline through a collapsing dollhouse-world. The dead children Coraline has to rescue are explicitly dead. The threat of having buttons sewn onto your eyes is treated with the seriousness it deserves. The film respects its audience’s capacity to handle real fear.
For Writers
Children can handle real horror in fiction. Adults often can’t, on behalf of children. Coraline doesn’t flinch and is one of the most beloved children’s films of its generation as a result. The lesson is that protective writing for younger audiences usually produces work the audience finds patronizing. Trust the audience to handle what the story requires. The child reader is more durable than the adult writer’s anxiety about the child reader.
The Other Mother
The Other Mother is one of the great villains in animation. Teri Hatcher’s vocal performance is the key. The first half of the film has her playing the Other Mother as warmer and more present than Coraline’s real mother. The audience and Coraline both want her to be real. The slow revelation that she’s hollow underneath, that her warmth is bait, and that her hunger is for the child she’s been pretending to love is one of the most disturbing emotional arcs in any film aimed at children.
The character works because the metaphor works. The Other Mother is what every distracted, exhausted parent is afraid their child secretly wishes for. She’s also what every child who feels unseen secretly fantasizes about. The film takes both anxieties seriously and uses them to power the horror. The audience leaves with a renewed appreciation for the actual flawed parent they have, the film’s covert moral payload.
For Writers
A villain who embodies a real anxiety has more power than a villain who’s just dangerous. The Other Mother is the perfect parent fantasy revealed as a trap. The horror isn’t that she’s a monster. The horror is that she looks like exactly what the protagonist wanted. The lesson is that the most effective antagonists give the protagonist something they want and then turn out to be wrong. Pure threat is easy to oppose. Temptation is harder.
The Production
The stop-motion is the most technically sophisticated American stop-motion ever produced at the time of release. The character of Coraline alone has dozens of interchangeable faces, allowing the animators to combine specific eyebrow positions with specific mouth shapes to create thousands of possible expressions. The Other World sets are physically built and lit, then digitally enhanced selectively where the practical solution required support. The collapse of the Other World in the third act involves practical effects that took months to plan and execute.
The film was also released in 3D. The 3D was carefully designed instead of added after, with Selick choreographing depth specifically for the format. The 3D version is the better version of the film. The flat version is also excellent.
For Writers
Technical ambition can be the foundation of artistic achievement when the technique serves the story. Coraline’s stop-motion is impressive on its own merits, but the impressive quality is also the point. The Other World looks more vivid than the real world. The audience can feel the labor in the production. The lesson is that technique that draws attention to itself can be valid if the attention reinforces the meaning. Spectacle that doesn’t connect to story is decoration. Spectacle that’s part of the meaning is craft.
Craft Note
Henry Selick directed and adapted from Neil Gaiman’s 2002 novella. Dakota Fanning voiced Coraline. Teri Hatcher voiced the Mother and Other Mother. John Hodgman voiced the Father and Other Father. Keith David voiced the Cat. Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French voiced Miss Spink and Miss Forcible. Ian McShane voiced Mr. Bobinsky. Bruno Coulais composed the score with They Might Be Giants contributing one song. Laika Entertainment produced. Released February 2009. Approximately sixty million dollar budget. One hundred and twenty-five million worldwide gross. Nominated for Best Animated Feature.
Is Coraline as good as people say?
10/10. One of the great children’s films and one of the great horror films, in the same package. The animation is the most accomplished American stop-motion to that point. The Other Mother is one of the great villains in any medium. The film respects its audience completely and is loved across generations as a result. Watch it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Writing in This Genre
This film appears on 2 of my film lists
