Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Jason Adams | Film | October 26, 2026
The exquisite tactility of stop-motion animation has never seemed more vital than it does today here in this age of artificial slop clogging up the artistic pipeline. Even if it’s only subconscious, the connection we feel, whether to the bristle of King Kong’s fur or a fingerprint smudge on Rudolph’s nose, is genuine—the palpable imprint of another human being back there, speaking to us through an act of staggering and painstaking recreation. It’s hand shadows on cave walls making eagles soar and heavens sing. And Laika—the studio already behind classics like Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings—is the art-form’s modern day crown jewel.
And sixteen years in the making, Wildwood might just be the crown jewel studio’s crown jewel. An epic of awesome creativity and fearless invention, this is a movie that would surely make giants like Ray Harryhausen and Phil Tippett weep tears that turn to diamonds in their hands. A vision so vast and inspiring, so boundless, that it’s truly impossible to take it all in after one sitting. See it on the biggest screen you can and then go right back for seconds and thirds, setting your eyes to every corner—surely every visit will reap new rewards, pleasures, and surprises, new joys and terrors, new gems in your own gentle grasp.
Based on the 2011 children’s book by The Decemberists’ front-man Colin Meloy—and anyone who’s ever heard a Decemberists song surely already knows that the man can summon up baroque feasts of lyrics from thin air—and illustrator Carson Ellis, Wildwood was directed by longtime Laika animator Travis Knight, who also gifted us Kubo. (To say nothing of this year’s He-Man movie. No really—say nothing of that.) It tells the story of a Portlandian teenager named Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) who takes her baby brother Mac to the park only to see him snatched up by a vast murder of crows that suddenly drops down out of the afternoon sky. Mac’s then carried off into what Prue’s father calls the “Impassable Wilderness”—an endless forest that nobody can get through the ivy to, and yet for some strange reason the growth slides right aside for Prue…
Accidentally tagging along is Prue’s classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), but the two are almost immediately separated by the sentient forces that gather there in the trees to go on their own dueling, thrilling quests—host to several kingdoms reigned over by all manner of beast and man, the so-called Impassable Wilderness is a world of owls the size of sedans and Nutcracker Coyotes, of Zootopian bureaucracies and Elvish battlecraft. It’s basically every fantasy story of the past two centuries blended together into a world of, dare one say, pure imagination. And if you want to view Paradise, well look no further, my furry friends.
Horrors abound there too—there are definite reasons this movie got rated PG-13. At times it can feel far closer to Dorothy getting electroshock treatment in Return to Oz than it does anything lil’ Judy Garland encountered. The story’s main… “villain” seems wrong… the story’s main antagonist aids in that, surely. Her name is the Dowager Governess Alexandra, and she is voiced by no less than the great Carey Mulligan, giving the kind of voice-acting performance that one wishes there were major awards for. (But then I also have Mulligan’s pronunciation of her dog’s name “Burberry” in the most recent season of Beef permanently imprinted on my brain.)
If Wildwood suffers from anything it’s the fact that Alexandra is far and away the most compelling character on screen—this is very much a story where the villain (excuse me, the antagonist) steals the show. One doesn’t want to give up the details but Alexandra’s reasons for her vengeance and madness turn out to be extremely moving, especially as rendered through Mulligan’s deep and dulcet sweep—and they’re also legitimately terrifying. This is a story of old bones and unsacred pacts, of broken hearts and minds and bodies. It opens with suicide. If you think humanity can crumble, can be battered and bruised, wait til you see these little puppet people fall apart.
The battles are harrowing, the scope is magnificent—this is truly a Lord of the Rings sized accomplishment of world-building and story-telling, and that’s only if Peter Jackson had himself hand-painted every single leaf, blade of grass, and pupil there is in New Zealand. (The work that these animators accomplish with the movements of eyes is staggering stuff.) Blood spills and characters whizz on the backs of eagles and a bike-ride through the streets of Portland “Keep Weird” Oregon becomes a feat so far beyond one’s ability to take even a tenth of it in you’ll feel like the one who’s spinning around in your seat. This is Avatar-level craft just not, you know, ugly. There are frames inside this chaos so pure and pretty you’ll weep.
This would all be great and laudable on its own, but it probably wouldn’t stick if Knight and his actors didn’t make this tale ache with real feeling—tactility’s nice but we want our hearts goosed, mangled, made love to. And the heart beats hard and fast for this one. Profound hurts shake those hand-painted leaves from their hand-painted trees, and the ground splits open in pain, in love, and in all the places they mingle—who knew watching two foot-tall stick-people have a tender hug in their driveway could shake something long lodged loose inside us? Wildwood knew, that’s who, and it’s still is here with me, reverberating on my skin. It left a mark.
