Wildwood review: the most beautiful animated film of the year

Every frame of Wildwood was built by hand, and you can feel it. LAIKA's long-gestating stop-motion fantasy is the most beautiful animated film of the year, a dark, old-fashioned fairy tale that looks like nothing else in cinemas.

The verdict: a near-masterpiece, with a story more familiar than its visuals. We give it 9 out of 10, and critics are almost unanimous: 98% on Rotten Tomatoes from 177 reviews and an 87 on Metacritic, with audiences at 97%.

Travis Knight directs from a script by Chris Butler, adapting the 2011 young adult novel by Decemberists singer Colin Meloy.

Portland teen Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is babysitting her baby brother Mac when a swarm of crows snatches him from a playground and carries him into the vast woods outside the city, woods everyone says are impossible to enter. With nerdy classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), she goes in after him.

Inside are talking coyotes dressed as soldiers, a regal eagle voiced by Angela Bassett, a band of bandits led by the enormous Brendan (Mahershala Ali), and the former governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), who commands the coyote army and has sinister plans for Mac.

It's also a big bet. The film cost $100 million to make and has taken $40.8 million in North America and $49.8 million worldwide after three weekends, according to The Numbers, holding at No. 3 for its first two weekends before slipping to No. 6.

Handmade, and it shows

The look is the reason to go. The forest is mossy, golden and alive, the creatures are crafted down to the fur, and the action scenes are staged on a scale stop-motion rarely tries.

Witney Seibold, writing for /Film (9/10), said the film "is so visually astonishing, so textured and vivacious, that it makes the old fantasy clichés in its script feel new again." TheWrap's William Bibbiani went further, calling it "one of the most astonishing animated films ever produced."

What's striking is the pace. Because every movement is animated by hand, Wildwood doesn't stuff the frame with noise the way so much CGI animation does. Scenes breathe, and the wonder never wears off: Prue and Curtis stay outsiders, wide-eyed to the end.

Mulligan is the film's secret weapon. Her Alexandra isn't a cackling witch but a grieving woman who has spent years trying to build a replica of the son she lost, and when she meets Curtis she sees a replacement. It's the darkest, saddest idea in the film, and the one that lingers.

The battle sequences invite comparisons with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, and mostly earn them, even if this is war fought by puppets.

Not one for little kids

Be warned: this is not Coraline-lite. Wildwood is rated PG-13 for brief partial nudity, bloody images, strong fantasy violence and suicide-related material, and the Film Stage's Alistair Ryder noted it earns that rating "before we're even a minute into the runtime".

The climax is a fiery battle with swords, bayonets and blood. Older kids who love scary stories will be thrilled. Younger ones may have nightmares.

The bigger problem is the script. Strip away the visuals and it's a brave sister rescuing a helpless sibling from a fantasy kingdom, the plot of Labyrinth and plenty of others, and it ends, as so many fantasies do, in a war. Seibold called the script his central criticism.

Vulture's Alison Willmore was the toughest critic, writing: "There's too much here to be effectively explored in a feature." Sight & Sound's Leigh Singer put it more gently: "Wildwood's magic is rooted in its dazzling craftmanship rather than the transcendental power of its story."

At 2 hours and 12 minutes, it also asks for patience in the middle stretch, as the clans of the woods and their politics pile up.

None of that sinks it. If you loved Coraline, The Dark Crystal or the darker Studio Ghibli films, this is your movie, and it's the rare animated film made for older kids and adults who still love fairy tales with teeth.

See it on the biggest screen you can find while it's in theaters, and stay in your seat: like most LAIKA films, it ends with a mid-credits look at how the puppets and sets were made.

It's a reminder that the old magic still works when someone builds it by hand, frame by painstaking frame.