Wildwood subverts our expectations of what a modern fable could be
Wildwood, Directed by Travis Knight and written by Chris Butler, isn’t easy to put into a genre. It’s presented as an animated movie, a family film, but it gets very dark very quickly, shifting from fairy tale to fantasy epic with elements of horror and ritual. While the first thing we notice about it is its stunning animation, beneath that beauty lies an absolutely mesmerizing tale of bureaucratic power, dark magic, borderline fascism and rebellion.
Its core is as heavy as its aesthetic layers, and for good reason.
Those rooted themes of a near-dystopia aren’t visible at first. The film’s fable like structure begins with bits of whimsy and moral presentation, drawing us in to this tale of two teens whisked away on an adventure to a far away (yet extremely near) magical place. And then it REALLY goes places. There are characters with dark motives, with vengeful misunderstandings of the cycles of life, characters who we think are pure but with enough naiveté that we question their capabilities — multifaceted characters with depth. Wildwood could have been told with an all human cast, but the book and the movie choosing to represent characters and ideas as animals is that much more impactful and meaningful. Adorable animals can be evil, they can be murderous, they can bite. The film does, in a way, require us to be open to those ideas, or at least open to the film presenting them.
This extends to the story, which I feel can only be told in stop-motion. It’s hand-crafted, with every frame, and every detail in every frame, meant to be viewed and experienced in a specific way. The poses, the lighting, the droplets of water, the way specific hairs stand up. The way that an eyeball is ever so slightly off in a face but it feels so much more real. And it feels like a book, like we’re being told a story by someone, nestled in our beds, on our couches, under a thick blanket, in the middle of Winter. By knowing that everything was planned and created with human hands, physical hands, it’s exponentially emotive and expressive. LAIKA Studios put their entire hearts into Wildwood, metaphorically and narratively.
I’m a Designer, a junky for creation. I’m completely floored, mystified. I’ve not seen levels of artisanship, craftsmanship like this in developing the visuals of a film (maybe of anything?) and how those visuals parallel the theme of beauty (of a society) being skin deep.
But I do feel that plot-wise it can move a little quickly at times, skipping a beat or two to keep it under cinema viewing time, or working a flashback sequence into a pivotal scene (I’m never really a fan of flashbacks). It does need us to understand the full breadth of the world’s situation, maybe slightly at the expense of storytelling. The plot acceleration from adventure towards almost a war epic feels ever so abrupt.
Either way, a terrific translation of the 2011 book by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, Wildwood is easy to enjoy. It is deep, it is filled with metaphors, it is dark, it is frightening, its symbology strikes a chord with the young adults who’ve grown up with it. It’s beautiful, so so beautiful, and worth the time to marvel at it.
It’s wonderful. Wildwood is purity of cinema as an art form. It’s required viewing.
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Great
Wildwood is distributed by Fathom Entertainment and is in theaters now. This review is based on a press screening sent to the Editor. Read about how we do our reviews here.
