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honeylikewords · 5 years

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pls give me your thoughts of coraline!! it's been in my netflix watch list for so long bc i feel like i should watch it. but im not really a big movie watcher so i havent had the motivation to actually sit down for it. (i've watched a lot of the movies you've talked about in the past and liked them so i trust your judgement uwuwuwu)

Oh, gladly!

So, Coraline is really interesting for a lot of different reasons! One, for me, is the animation; it’s absolutely beautiful and nearly entirely done in stop-motion. LAIKA Studios, the animation company that made that film, is truly amazing with the work they do and I really can’t think of any medium better to translate the story of Coraline through! I’ve always been super invested in stop-motion, ever since I was a wee baby, so I’m obsessed with how it looks and how it moves, how it’s so graceful and yet stilted; I love it!

I also think that, thematically, the story is really intense. I think the book is a lot scarier (the film is based on Neil Gaiman’s original book, Coraline), but the film isn’t too terrifying. It has some parts that actually do scare me, though, but that’s more as someone who has a lot of Anxiety(TM) about abuse, manipulation, etc.

If that’s a trigger for you, I do warn you to be careful about seeing Coraline. Gaslighting and parental abuse are a major theme in the book, as the major antagonist, The Other Mother, sort of represents the nightmare matriarch that is really famous in a lot of horror stories. She’s kind of the embodiment of sickly, obsessive, cruel motherhood, the kind that smothers and kills the object of its fixation, so if you’re at all upset by stories of abusive mothers or manipulation or emotional extortion, parts of Coraline may be hard for you to deal with.

There’s also mentions of eye trauma but nothing explicit or gory, more like a kind of fairy tale horror, in that for The Other Mother’s spell to fully take hold of Coraline, she has to “become like a doll” and “sew buttons into her eyes”, so if eye trauma or needles are at all upsetting for you, that’s another thing to be careful of.

Coraline is kind of horror-lite: like the horror and fear imbued into Grimm’s fairy tales or into folklore or ghost stories, but with more of a complete narrative arc to it, which I think works in its favor. I really, really love it, and it’s just so gorgeous to look at, too.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit the LAIKA exhibits at SDCC for the past few years and was able to actually interact with sets, props, figures, and even puppets used in Coraline, and they’re amazing. The attention to detail is fantastic, and every scene is like a living world unto itself, or like a perfect little dollhouse of the unnerving.

I’ve watched it so many times because I’m in love with the visual aspects of it and Teri Hatcher delivers an INCREDIBLE job in dual roles as both Coraline’s real, Earthly mother AND The Other Mother. The film also manages to take the genuine, terrifying, very real horror of an abusive mother and take it to the Nth degree in The Other Mother, and I still shudder during a scene where she’s banging on a door and screaming at Coraline as Coraline runs away; “DON’T LEAVE ME, DON’T LEAVE ME, I’LL DIE WITHOUT YOU!”

That line shivers me down to the bone because it really is what it sounds like when an emotional manipulator and abuser is being left, and they somehow managed to encapsulate it all down into a short movie. The Other Mother has relatively few scenes but her whole arc-- every minute, start to finish-- matches with the exact patterns of abuse I’ve seen. From the lavish gift-giving to the promises of happiness and safety and love to the controlling and temper tantrums and lashing out to the “But I love you more than anyone else ever could” and “You can’t leave me, I need you!”, it’s amazing how the film is able to put all the elements of an abusive cycle into just one short film and one even shorter arc of a character.

But even then, story aside, just watch it for the gorgeous visuals and worldbuilding. There’s only, like, one(?) scene that ever takes place away from the house, The Pink Palace, which is both incredible and incredibly sensible (given that building too expansive a world for a stop-motion movie can be damning to a project). The Pink Palace is where everything happens, and yet it feels like a whole universe, and it’s gorgeous. Everything, down to each floorboard and fiber of Coraline’s sweater, is meticulously detailed. I adore it.

I have such, such, such love for stop-motion and I think Coraline really sets the bar for how beautiful it can be. It’s an amazing narrative AND a visually sumptuous meal of a film and I highly recommend it. Of course, I throw in my caveats from before, but it’s not a horrific, frightening spectacle of a film. It’s only about as scary as your average Tim Burton movie, really, unless you’re particularly triggered by the things I previously mentioned. But, if nothing else, at least look up visuals from the film and see how gorgeous and detailed everything is.

I have my little Coraline doll (the actual doll-doll, like her little doll from the film) sitting on my shelf and I love to hold her and carry her around because I just... adore the film. I can’t get enough of it. I could spend all day answering questions about it, but for now, just take my word on it: go see it, and tell me what you think!

Thank you so much for asking and inciting this huge goofy semi-info-dump. I love and appreciate you!

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