Laika's Wildwood: An Old-Fashioned Stop-Motion Quest — SkimNews
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- Laika's "Wildwood" adapts Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy's bestselling children's novel into a stop-motion fantasy written by Chris Butler and directed by Travis Knight, the studio's lead animator who also oversaw the screenplay's source material.
- The film is set in modern-day Portland, Oregon, whose hipster coffee shops and 'Woke 1.0' signage are affectionately mocked, with the city's real Forest Park mythologized as the impassable wilderness 'Wildwood.'
- 12-year-old Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) chase a 'murder' of crows into the forest after the birds abduct Prue's baby brother Mac from a city playground.
- Carey Mulligan voices the forest's evil dowager governess, who commands a redcoat army of coyotes, while Mahershala Ali voices bandit leader and freedom fighter Brendan.
- The reviewer praises the stop-motion's 'robust and pleasing directness' as more organic than Pixar's digital look, but finds the governess's motive under-delivered and the story weaker than Coraline's 'scary punch.'
- Critics across Deadline, Variety, and IndieWire frame the film as Laika's most ambitious feature to date, with IndieWire notably calling it less magical than the studio's best earlier films.
Why it matters: Laika occupies a rare niche of prestige stop-motion family filmmaking that competes on tactile craft rather than franchise IP, and 'Wildwood' is its biggest swing since 'Coraline.' The split critical reaction — unanimous praise for visual ambition and animated craft, reservations about narrative clarity relative to the studio's signature film — marks a test of whether Laika's escalating visual scale translates into broader storytelling impact.
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