Travis Knight’s action-adventure epic is a groundbreaking feat of modern filmmaking, and the best fantasy blockbuster in years. Here’s our Wildwood review. The characters of Wildwood, the latest animation from Oregon stop-motion whizz kids, Laika, don’t like stories. Protagonist, Prue, especially. She’s a teenager who rolls her eyes when her nerdy classmate, Curtis, invites her ... Wildwood review | Epic fantasy goes miniature
Travis Knight’s action-adventure epic is a groundbreaking feat of modern filmmaking, and the best fantasy blockbuster in years. Here’s our Wildwood review.
The characters of Wildwood, the latest animation from Oregon stop-motion whizz kids, Laika, don’t like stories. Protagonist, Prue, especially. She’s a teenager who rolls her eyes when her nerdy classmate, Curtis, invites her to join his tabletop roleplay campaign. She has similar disdain for her father’s “figurine” collection, and for his repeated warnings to stay out of “the impassable wilderness,” the vast woodland one suspension bridge away from modern-day Portland, where they live. Confronted by a villainous dowager governess, she refuses to be drawn in to what she sees as an outlandish fairy tale.
But drawn in she is, and we along with her. Because when the headstrong teenager ignores her hippie parents’ demands to keep her baby brother indoors, he’s snatched by a murder of crows (rarely a good sign) and taken to the very forest her father warned her about. She, obligatory escapist fantasy bicycle and unwanted sidekick in tow, follows, deep into a Gilded Age landscape of talking animals, principalities and bandit kings. Prue had better start believing in fairy stories – she’s in one.
After a series of five in-house feature films all sampling the fantasy genre in various ways, Wildwood feels like the culmination of something for Laika (and director/CEO Travis Knight). To its protagonist’s chagrin, this is a proper fantasy epic through-and-through, a beat-for-beat action-adventure story complete with thrilling chase sequences, clashing armies and columns of hyena troops in Napoleonic garb.
The scale and ambition on display here is frankly astonishing, taking the world of Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s 2011 novel and rendering its magical forests, mansions and waterfalls in silicone and clay. Forget the medium’s built-in-a-garage roots; this is a no-expense-spared muscle flex from the only stop-motion studio capable of commanding this kind of budget. Laika’s signature higher-framerate animation eschews the thumbprint aesthetic for something closer to realism and perfection; replicated across the number of varied sets and locations at the scale demanded by the epic fantasy genre, the level of detail here threatens to become overwhelming if you think about it too long. Better, then, to take Wildwood’s consistent, aching beauty as read, and just enjoy the ride.
Because oh, what a ride it is. From high-speed bike chase to prison escapes, Wildwood offers kinetically shot action sequences at a pace and impact that would put Mission: Impossible to shame. The cinematography and sound design – features often overlooked in animation circles – pull their weight here. Knight and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (on his first stop-motion film) take full advantage of the medium’s ability to approximate unbroken takes, sending the camera ducking and weaving through set pieces and taking full advantage of the puppets’ exceptionally detailed faces with a series of close-ups.
Meanwhile, the tread of every sprinting footstep and the flash of every rifle (yes, there are rifles) is picked out of the sound mix with a weighty crunch that brings every impact into sharp focus. This is a film, to employ an over-used phrase, that absolutely demands to be seen in the cinema, not least because (if my screening was anything top go by) you’ll experience the rest of the audience leaning forward at the same time as you. One third act set piece in particular offers probably the most thrilling fantasy action sequence since The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
That kinetic feel is heightened by a tone somewhere between The Chronicles Of Narnia and, surprisingly, Game Of Thrones. Wildwood earns its 12A rating from the BBFC (rare for stop-motion, which tends to alternate between extremes of family-friendly Aardman and Phil Tippett’s Mad God) by refusing to shy away from its story’s darker moments. A column of coyotes stumble across a spent battlefield, dozens of dead bandits half-buried in ashen grey mud; Prue’s knuckles are soon bruised, scraped and bloodied as she clings onto her bike’s handlebars; the story itself deals with mature themes as well, grief and loss taking centre-stage as adults and children alike come of age in a world which, again, seems to reject simplistic fantasy narratives even as it performs their greatest hits with a flourish.
But none of this bleakness ever feels oppressive: Chris Butler’s script is always ready with a joke, whether that’s with a spot of character comedy or a rabbit with a colander on its head. And it’s all sold with a combination of expert puppet manipulation and voice acting, almost-imperceptible movements in a character’s face matched with a cast including Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali and, of course, Awkwafina (it is impossible to make a modern animated film that doesn’t contain Awkwafina).
This is a film of contradictions: an expertly told, classic adventure story that rejects classic adventure stories, with a superficially perfectly happy protagonist who nonetheless already seems to have the cares of the world carved on her teenage face. Wildwood is both bleak and hopeful, thrillingly violent and concerned with the ramifications of violence, a no-holds-barred fantasy epic made up of puppets the size of your hand. It’s a film that both has its cake and eats it with indigestion-threatening gusto. You’d better start believing in fairy stories; Knight and co have just made the closest thing we’ll get to real magic.
Wildwood premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on 11th October. It arrives in UK cinemas on 23rd October.
