FILM CHALLENGE: 18) Coraline

18) Coraline

Director: Henry Selick

Year: 2009

Plot Summary: When Coraline moves to an old house, she feels bored and neglected by her parents. She finds a hidden door with a bricked up passage. During the night, she crosses the passage and finds a parallel world where everybody has buttons instead of eyes, with caring parents and all her dreams coming true. When the Other Mother invites Coriline to stay in her world forever, the girl refuses and finds that the alternate reality where she is trapped is only a trick to lure her.

When I was 5 years old, I played a game on my Dad's computer called Toonstruck; a cartoon puzzle game involving cute furry animals, humorous talking scarecrows and bright, colourful animation. Then, all of a sudden, things went dark. Everything began to die, those cute animals turned satanic and what was once bright and colourful became post-apocalyptic and grey. Nothing has ever scared me more, in the following 14 years of my life, than that terrifying experience of playing Toonstruck.

However, if I watched Coraline at the age I was then, it would certainly surpass even Toonstruck. Henry Selick's nightmarish stop-motion animation is as close as a children's film will ever get to being The Exorcist. And, you know what, this makes Coraline brilliant. After all, there's nothing more memorable than having the living daylights scared out of you. The opening paragraph of this post is proof alone. I can't remember my first day at pre-school and wouldn't be able to recall my 5th birthday under Chinese water torture. But every frame of those moments when Toonstruck turned from an innocent, cute children's world to something you'd find in Cormac McCarthy's The Road will forever remain in my memory.

Sure, the film has it's faults, of course. For an adult viewer it's obvious from the very beginning that the 'other' world isn't quite as nice as it seems and there are moments when things feel a little unnecessary and stretched-out. However, this is almost forgivable because of Selick's incredible animation. If anything, Coraline is hard proof that animated films can be more creative and artistic than any life-action movie could ever dream of. Whether it's the wonderful contrasts of monochrome and colour, the glorious transitions, the sensational action scenes, the breathtaking imagery or the haunting changes of the tint depending on the mood, every second of Coraline is a feast for your eyes.

While Pixar clearly still have the monopoly on this genre, and rightly so, Coraline gives them a fairly good run for their money with this creative, terrifying and totally imaginative Oscar-nominee. It still hasn't convinced me to watch Nightmare Before Christmas though.

4/5

By Daniel Sarath with 3 comments