What’s It About

After her baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows, headstrong teenager Prue McKeel launches a desperate rescue mission into an enchanted forest hidden just beyond Portland, Ore. Joined by a hapless but loyal classmate, Prue risks it all as she navigates a world of bandits, talking animals and powerful figures driven by grief and ambition.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Let’s keep it a buck: it’s hard to trust a good review these days. Everybody and they mama got a brand deal, and half the “reviews” on your timeline are just ads with nicer lighting. So when somebody calls a movie a masterpiece, side-eyeing it is a natural reflex. But every once in a while, a film shows up so strong that you toss the caution out the window. LAIKA’s Wildwood is that film. It’s huge, it’s gorgeous, it’s heavy, and it pulls off things nobody has ever done with stop-motion. This one might flip the whole game. Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a 12-year-old in Portland, Oregon, stuck watching her baby brother Mac. Her parents told her to keep him home. She takes him out anyway. Then a murder of crows swarms the playground and snatches Mac right off the top of a slide. Prue and her classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay) chase the birds straight into the Impassable Wilderness, a forest on the edge of town that regular folks aren’t supposed to be able to enter. Somehow, they get in. Waiting inside is an entire hidden world packed with talking animals, bandits, warring groups, buried secrets, and a ruler who has completely lost it. That ruler is Alexandra, the Dowager Governess, voiced by Carey Mulligan, and I’ll say it with my chest: she’s the best animated villain in years. American animation hasn’t handed us a bad guy this unforgettable since Ursula and Maleficent. Her land used to be peaceful, until her son Alexei died and grief ate her alive. Now she rules through cruelty, betrayal, and pure fear. What makes her land so hard is that she isn’t evil for no reason. She’s sad. Crushingly sad. And sad people with power are scary. Mulligan plays her with a quiet unpredictability that keeps you guessing whether she’s about to cry or hurt somebody. Most of the time, it’s both. Mulligan isn’t the only heavyweight in those woods, and for Black moviegoers, two names on this cast list deserve the spotlight. Mahershala Ali voices Brendan, the Bandit King, who leads the rebels Alexandra is scheming to wipe out. Angela Bassett voices The General, a giant golden eagle who commands the forest’s birds and becomes Prue’s guide. Both of these characters possess real power, make real decisions, and help determine what happens in the battle. Ali brings the calm gravitas he is famous for. Bassett is her usual self: she walks in with rank. And it goes without saying, she hardly has to use any voice at all to be listened to because there are no questions when one sees her grand stature to know why the woods listen to her. Having said that, it still makes sense to mention the larger picture here. Two of the most respected Black actors working today land in supporting roles, one as an outlaw and one as a bird, while the hero’s journey belongs to somebody else. That’s not a knock on Wildwood alone, and both of them make every minute count. It’s a pattern Hollywood animation still hasn’t fully shaken, and it’s fair to want more. Basically, the movie is all about love and how it can save or destroy you depending on how you wield it. Prue’s love for her brother takes her through remorse and through fear and into a forest that wants her dead. Alexandra’s love for her kid turns from something positive to something obsessive. It’s a pretty deep premise for a cartoon, and, as always, Wildwood does not shy away from it. That’s LAIKA’s trademark. ParaNorman tackled bullying. Kubo and the Two Strings wrestled with death and memory. The Boxtrolls took on prejudice. Wildwood is them going bigger than ever: 231 handmade puppets and 136 physical sets, every puppet moved frame by frame, roughly 15 years after LAIKA first announced the project. Knowing every inch of it was built by human hands might put a lump in your throat. Caleb Deschanel, the legendary cinematographer, lights this thing like a live-action epic. During the big battle, a rider charges in and takes somebody’s head clean off, and Deschanel frames it as a silhouette: a horse rearing against a dusk sky with the battlefield burning behind it. Straight up gangsta. That’s a Lord of the Rings shot, the kind you’d expect from Roger Deakins, not from puppets. The faces seal the deal. The studio 3D-printed roughly 140,000 of them, blowing past its own Missing Link record, so these characters could show real emotion. The opening shot of Alexei in agony conveys a lot with no dialogue whatsoever. This isn’t some sort of tech show-off, rather, tech serves the story. Is it flawless? Probably not. There is good mythology here, but just as the filmmakers stayed true to the story, the script takes breaks every now and then to explain things. Between the end of the first act and the beginning of the last one, there are at least three major info dumps. Those lengthy explanations tell more than they show and slow down the pacing of the film. At over two hours and ten minutes, you will notice it. And then there is the PG-13 rating, which the film has definitely earned. There is violence and blood. It’s not a movie for little kids. Wildwood is the most audacious project LAIKA has undertaken and has also become the longest stop-motion movie to date. While most animated movies continue to produce sequels and spin-offs, this one comes with an original storyline made with careful craftsmanship, heart, and patience. Should Wildwood be an Oscar contender? Definitely! It deserves its place in the company of Beauty and the Beast, Up, and Toy Story 3. This movie needs to be watched!

OUR RATING – A MYSTICAL 9