Laika’s new stop-motion film Wildwood opens in theaters this week — and while it’s stunning to look at, critics say it lacks the soul of earlier hits like Coraline and Kubo. The question now: can magic survive without belief?
Laika’s latest stop-motion epic, Wildwood, lands in theaters this Wednesday — and it’s already drawing breathless comparisons to the studio’s past glories. But the reviews aren’t glowing. IndieWire calls it ‘the least enchanting of Laika’s films’, even as it admits the craftsmanship is staggering: 142,000 hand-crafted face models, 728 trees molded one by one, 715 miles of brass wire.
The film took over three years to build, with a miniature Powell’s City of Books recreated down to the Drag Queen Story Hour sign. It’s a monument to patience, and possibly to hubris. The story follows Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a teenager who rolls her eyes at her dad’s fairy tales about an enchanted forest beyond Portland’s St. John’s Bridge.
When her baby brother is snatched by a murder of crows, CGI-heavy, yes, but terrifyingly real in motion, she crosses into Wildwood, a realm where imagination bleeds into reality. It’s a journey that should feel like magic. Instead, IndieWire finds it hollow. The script, adapted from Colin Meloy’s novel and Carson Ellis’s illustrations, leans on tropes.
The darkness is heavier than usual for Laika, PG-13 for good reason, the review warns, and the emotional core feels undercooked. Prue doesn’t believe in wonder. She’s too busy being cool. And Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), her nerdy friend, is stuck in a fantasy world he can’t escape.
Their dynamic, once promising, fizzles. The film wants to be about faith in magic, even when you’ve stopped believing, but it never quite earns that weight. Still, the visuals are breathtaking. Every frame looks like a museum piece.
The battle sequences? Built one frame at a time. The attention to detail, the Decemberists posters in Prue’s room, the bagpipe-playing Darth Vader on a unicycle, suggests a studio that still cares. But care isn’t enough.
Not this time. Fathom Entertainment will release Wildwood in select theaters on October 23. Whether audiences will find its heart or just admire its hands remains to be seen. One thing’s certain: no other studio would spend this much on a movie that might not make back its cost.
That alone makes it worth watching, if only to see what happens when love isn’t enough.
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