Publisher: Manuel São Bento October 23, 2026
Check out my full review @ www.manuelsbento/wildwood-2026-laika-delivers-a-stop-motion-generational-masterpiece/ Rating: A+ WILDWOOD is a true masterpiece, and I don't use that word lightly. Travis Knight and everyone at Laika spent years building, by hand, the most impressive stop-motion movie I've ever seen, one that deserves the "generational classic" stamp. Caleb Deschanel's cinematography and Dario Marianelli's score belong in every major awards conversation, as the final battle sits right next to the greatest set pieces ever put to screen. Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jacob Tremblay carry two beautiful arcs. Carey Mulligan makes sorrow terrifying and heartbreaking at the same time. It's a dark, brave, deeply emotional story about grief, family, sacrifice, and, in a very Tolkien manner, the courage of small creatures and their everyday deeds to keep darkness at bay. No notes. I'll forever cherish this treasure.

Publisher: nkuk October 24, 2026
Technically its a marvel, but storywise it really falls flat. The stop-motion animation is so well done and fluid it looks like it could be computer generated. It must have taken an absolutely mammoth effort to create the film. The film has a painterly palette which looks gorgeous. Which is all the more shame as the characters and story let it down. The characters are less than one dimensional. The parents make some of the most bizarre and illogical actions ever set to screen. Prue doesn't believe in magic she says, but never ever questions it. The other characters are under-developed cliches. The core of the story has conflicting messages and just washed over me, I didn't develop any affinity for any of the characters or end up rooting for them, and the film didn't connect with me on any level emotionally. The film looks gorgeous, but there is nothing under the surface.

Publisher: andrewtislercinephile October 28, 2026
Laika has always been one of my least favorite animation studios, and it's because they are tied to a medium of animation (stop-motion) that is becoming more and more dated as CGI is trying to replicate it with new software, and *Wildwood* is no exception. This movie is based on a 2011 novel about a teenager named Prue McKeel, who ventures into a forbidden forest to retrieve her baby brother Mac from the dowager governess, Alexandra. While the movie itself has a great story that perfectly blends action, comedy, character development, solid pacing, and emotional moments, and even has a phenomenal score from Dario Marianelli, the film's edgy, PG-13-level tone and stop motion visuals, while alluring, feel like a major letdown. The character designs look so stiff and plastic, almost like moving dolls rather than real people. And that's my problem with stop motion animation: the texture doesn't feel human and is not even trying to hide the materials it uses. The hair doesn't look like real human hair follicles, and the skin looks like it was made from silicone or clay (which it was). I am honestly not upset this movie is flopping at the box office, as stop motion animation has always been both a tricky medium to work with and a time-consuming one that takes too much out of an animators' day. It's very well-written and even the voice actors make up for some of the creepy character designs, not to mention that final scene of Prue stopping Alexandra is one of the most inspiring scenes in all of animated fiction, the uncanny visuals and slightly dark tone do drag it down. We have to remember Laika is both a family-friendly studio and one that doesn't dive into overly creepy territory. Even *Coraline*, their "darkest movie ever", is tame by comparison. I enjoyed *Wildwood* as it is, but I don't think Laika will survive the 2020s if they keep relying on nostalgia to fuel their stories, coupled with the fact the movie's director, Travis Knight, is a nepo baby relying on his dad's shoe company funding his projects.

Publisher: aleo4 November 4, 2026
### *A Defiant Handcrafted Miracle in an Age of Plastic Cinema* There is a moment early in *Wildwood* when the Pacific Northwest sun filters through a canopy of moss draped Douglas firs, catching the frayed thread of Prue McKeel’s knit sweater and the subtle, microscopic wobble of miniature resin leaves. You can practically smell the rain-soaked soil. In an era where cinema is increasingly assembled inside sterile server racks, seeing actual physical matter sculpted, painted, dressed, and nudged twenty-four times a second by human hands feels less like watching an animated film and more like witnessing an act of sheer spiritual rebellion. For years, mainstream big-budget filmmaking has drifted toward the frictionless. Modern Disney productions often look undeniably expensive yet buffed to such algorithmic, glossy perfection that nothing has grit or texture. Marvel blockbusters routinely drown their actors in gray, weightless green-screen voids where fists land without kinetic impact and landscapes dissolve into muddy CG slurry. And looming over all of it is the grim specter of generative AI—a technology obsessed with eliminating the "inconvenience" of human labor to crank out slick, soulless pastiches. ***Wildwood* takes that entire technological philosophy, looks it directly in the eye, and spits in its face.** Every frame of this film is an ode to the labor of the thumbprint. You feel the physical mass of the puppets, the tactile friction of bespoke textiles, and the intricate clockwork joints hidden beneath the fur of talking coyotes and mechanical birds. When a chase sequence tears through the Impassable Wilderness, branches whip with genuine resistance. When a murder of crows swoops down upon a playground, the terror isn’t rendered via procedural crowd-simulation particles; it is choreographed with blood, sweat, and micro-tweezers. Laika has always pushed stop-motion, but here, director Travis Knight achieves something bordering on madness. Knight, who previously directed *Kubo and the Two Strings*, directs *Wildwood* not like someone constrained by the physical limits of miniature stages, but like David Lean tackling high fantasy. Clocking in at well over two hours across more than a hundred built physical sets, this is the longest and most staggeringly ambitious stop-motion film ever mounted. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel lights these miniature stages with the moody naturalism of an arthouse period drama, while Dario Marianelli’s sweeping, melancholy score imbues the forest with centuries of forgotten lore. The visual design is directly indebted to Carson Ellis’s original storybook illustrations for Colin Meloy's novel, yet it expands outward into something epic. The vocal performances give the physical puppets real emotional gravity, Peyton Elizabeth Lee anchors Prue with just the right mix of teenage exhaustion and fierce resolve, while Carey Mulligan gives the Dowager Governess an operatic, tragic menace that elevates the conflict beyond simple fairy-tale villainy. The lone half-star deduction comes strictly from the narrative tightrope walk. Meloy’s novel is a sprawling, digressive beast, and in cramming its dense political factions, magical hierarchies, and climactic battlefield skirmishes into a single feature, the second half occasionally suffocates under the sheer weight of its own world-building. A couple of poignant character beats get cut short to make room for yet another factional standoff or mythology dump. Yet even when the plot races, the imagery halts you in your tracks. *Wildwood* is a monumental reminder of why we fell in love with movies in the first place. It stands as definitive proof that the flaws, textures, patience, and deliberate devotion of human artists will always outshine whatever smooth, automated illusion a machine tries to sell us. A genuine triumph of craft over convenience.

Publisher: CinemaSerf November 5, 2026
Despite being warned to keep her baby brother indoors, "Prue" takes him out on a trip around town and he gets pinched by a menacing murder of crows and taken deep into the impenetrable forest. She's determined to get him back and so sets off into the dark and forbidding woods where she quickly encounters the coyotes - the guards of the "Dowager Governess". Captured and taken to her castle, she is promised assistance in retrieving her sibling but just how trustworthy is this outwardly benign lady? For that matter, what about the marauding "Brendan" and his gang of ruthless bandits? Finally of course, just what have the crows got to do do with things in a kingdom where the other birds seem a good deal more helpful? So, who or what - if any - can she trust? I wasn't so impressed with the story here - it's a fairly obvious hybrid of Frodo Potter goes to Narnia adventures, but the detail in the animation and the crafting of the characters are gorgeous to look at and it makes the most of it's dense forest setting to tell us a tale of courage and friendship tempered with the increasingly obvious and toxic effects of grief - well epitomised by the concept that the ivy can be all consuming. This is a stunning piece of cinema but it could have done with something a little more creative from a storyline that felt very much like the poor relation to the visuals here.