Wildwood Review: LAIKA’s Staggering Technical Achievement Stretches Bounds of Stop-Motion Animation

Wildwood is not in cinemas.

One of the great failures of our current cultural landscape is the stubborn belief that animation is a lesser art form that’s incapable of adequately addressing adult themes. Despite several features that broach complex subjects, such as post-World War II Japan in Grave of the Fireflies and The Boy and the Heron, or a post-climate-crisis dystopia in Flow, animation is still regarded as a children’s plaything (or an adult in suspended adolescence’s plaything). 

What is Wildwood about?

I can’t imagine a world where Wildwood, the stop-motion animated feature directed by Travis Knight and produced by LAIKA, would sit comfortably in the realm of childhood, even though its protagonists are children. The film follows Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a rebellious teenager living in Oregon with her parents and her baby brother, Mac. One day, against their parents’ wishes, Prue takes Mac out on a trip to the playground, accompanied by her classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay). Within minutes of arriving, a cabal of crows descends on the playground and kidnaps Mac, carrying him into the Impassable Wilderness, a forest that is said to have magical properties. 

Prue and Curtis enter the Impassable Wilderness and find themselves caught in the middle of a community of magical humans and talking animals on the brink of war. At the center of the conflict is Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), the dowager governess of the woods who, with her army of wolf soldiers, seeks revenge against the citizens who cast her out. Also driving her actions is a deep well of grief over the loss of her son Alexei, whom she hopes to bring back to life by any means necessary.

Wildwood review

Despite the harping about animation being much more than its child-skewing visuals, Wildwood is truly a staggeringly beautiful piece of animation. The film is awash in intricate, varied textures that give the settings a magical yet tangible feel, evoking whimsy and wonder without letting us stray too far from the ground. The characters are modeled similarly, with slightly exaggerated features – worry lines, wrinkles, and freckles among them – that bring these magical, mystical beings closer to real-world emotions. The hollows of Alexandra’s jaw reflect the weight of her grief over Alexei’s death, while Curtis’s faint blush is a reminder of his youth and innocence thrown into disarray by Alexandra and her army holding him hostage. 

Wildwood’s vibrant, complex designs form some of the year’s most arresting sequences, animated or otherwise. Prue flying on the back of the General (Angela Bassett), the leader of the bird kingdom, is a compositional marvel. The sky’s reds, oranges, yellows, and blues are gorgeous, as are the characters’ close-ups, caught in the rapture and freedom of flight. Even more impressive is the fluidity of the frames in motion. Part of the charm of stop-motion animation is the slight wobble in movement, which conveys the figures’ weight in the real world. Here, there is virtually no lag in the figures’ movement, remarkable considering the amount of pulsating action in the scene. The General dives, soars, zigs, zags, and crashes without a stutter, as if it were 60 frames-per-second hand-drawn animation. 

There are many kinetic, frenetic action scenes in Wildwood, and all share the unique trait of fluidity and heft. There is a subtly powerful reason why. Stripped down to its foundations, Wildwood is about the ferocity of conflict and the terrible costs it exacts on communities. Much like other fantasy epics such as The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, this film shows how regular citizens are often subject to the whims of the powerful. Alexandra represents power as a function of depravity, while the current governor represents power functioning despite incompetence. Their inability or disinterest in seeing beyond their own needs has dire consequences for the Wilderness’s inhabitants, and Knight doesn’t shirk from the inevitable carnage. 

Meaning, Wildwood is dark. Anyone who thinks the film will be an amusing adolescent diversion will be stunned by the level of violence. It isn’t gratuitous; every shot, stab, and explosion is earned. However, it is not for innocent eyes. (One could make the case that it should be a grounding point for parental discussions about what violence means and looks like.) Even for someone who believes in animation’s potential to explore adult themes, it is still jarring to see. 

Another somewhat jarring element is the breadth of the storytelling. Wildwood, by its very premise, is a worldbuilding exercise. Knight must endear us to Prue, Mac, and Curtis, and at least understand Alexandra, while fleshing out the Wilderness so that it feels narratively present. The film is mostly successful, but Knight draws some connections less solid than others. Alexandra is frighteningly relatable as both a grieving mother and a political zealot, and Curtis has a subtly affecting arc from an awkward bumbler to a resourceful hero. Prue is slightly less rich, perhaps because the Wilderness’s internal logic drives her character arc. Knight tries to serve all of the Wilderness’s constituencies while developing its rules and regulations, but sometimes the effort feels too broad. Key groups like the bandits and the bird kingdom feel underdeveloped, and some of the most intriguing characters (like Owl Rex) are relegated to cameos.

Is Wildwood worth seeing?

Even when it falls a bit short, Wildwood’s ambition is worthy of recognition and praise. Travis Knight and his team of animators made a film of extraordinary technical craft that stretches the deliberately limited bounds of stop-motion animation without sacrificing an ounce of the form’s charm. It presents itself as a new kind of epic, following the path of Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke in scale while carving its own wholly original lane. For a studio built on remarkable heights, Wildwood pushes LAIKA even further to hold the future of animation for children, adults, and everything in between.

Wildwood Review: LAIKA’s Staggering Technical Achievement Stretches Bounds of Stop-Motion Animation