Overdue Movie Review: Coraline

There is a strange paradox when it comes to horror movies and young children. On one hand they will constantly want to see horror movies in a desire to become more "grown up", on the other hand many parents may wonder if they are mature enough to watch a movie like Alien and not get so scarred that you are forced to eat breakfast with your shirts off in case a random chestburster finds its way out.

Now thanks to Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick, we have a movie that is scary as fuck but is appropriate for children. Now we have Coraline, the offspring of a drunken one night stand between Dora the Explorer and The Shining.

This movie is based after a childrens book by Neil Gaiman, who is probably most famous for the Sandman graphic novels. If you have read Sandman, you understand that there is no better style for Gaiman's work than Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas (No, its not Tim Burton, go check IMDB). Some of you may remember Corpse Bride, an easily forgettable movie that hit theaters sometime when I was still in high school. However, until I saw Coraline, I couldn't put my finger on where exactly they went wrong.

Nightmare before Christmas uses a style called Stop animation, which I'm not going to explain to you right now. Back in the early nineties when Nightmare was made, this process was still very experimental and wasnt widely used. Ten years later, after breakthroughs such as Wallace and Gromit and other stop animation films, we saw Corpse Bride, which either did not use stop animation or used it so well that we didnt notice, either way the style lost its charm in Corpse Bride.

The reason I went on this long tangent is to explain that Coraline was everything Corpse Bride should have been. The stop motion is excellent, but it still looks experimental. Every character is well designed, much like Nightmare. Neil Gaiman's talent as a writer truly shines in this adaptation of his book. The story was frightening, but not so frightening that you couldn't take yoru children to see it. It was interesting near the end where you see the characters of the 'other world' start to become more and more monsterous.

That being said, it really isn't anything revolutionary like Nightmare Before Christmas. The really big deal that the movie was shown in 3D, which I thought was done extremely well and should get Hollywood to start thinking about using 3D as more than just a gimmick for bad horror movies. Aside from that, no new ground has been broken despite this being a very good movie.

If you didn't like Nightmare Before Christmas, don't expect to like this one. However, if you liked Nightmare and/or are a big fan of animated movies, I highly reccomend this movie. Take your kids, they will like it even if they do soil themselves in fright at a few points.

Rating: Three Aces: Full Price