Coraline (2009)

Coraline (2009)

6/10

Starring the voice of

Dakota Fanning

Teri Hatcher

Directed by Henry Selick

Coraline is a dark horror fantasy stop motion 3D animation that just sticks out in your mind as one creepy movie. It stalls you and keeps you in the dark as you try to decipher where the terror will be coming from, and when it does arrive, you find yourself wishing this is one of those films that the good guy wins, although there are numerous of them this just got to be one.

Coraline doesn’t strike me as a film for children although it does carry a message of how you should be thankful of what you have. The grass may look greener on the other side, but there may be a high price to pay to get there and stay there.

Coraline is based on a book of the same name by British author Neil Gaiman (who also wrote the novel Stardust that was also adapted to a film of the same name in 2007).

The movie plot is about a girl named Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who moved with her parents to an old house that has been subdivided into flats. The other tenants were Miss Spink and Miss Forcible two elderly stage actors and Mr. Bobinski, who is training mice to form a mouse circus.

One rainy day she discovers a locked door in her room, which has been bricked up. While visiting her neighbors Mr. Bobinsky delivers a message to her telling her not to go through the door. Coraline ignores the warnings and goes through the door which leads her to a parallel universe.There she sees a different version of her house where she meets her other mother and other father, who were better and treated her better than her real mother and father. Not just her parents were in this other parallel universe, so were her neighbors. The difference here is that the people in the other world have buttons for eyes.

Soon Coraline learns that this other world is not as rosy as it appears and her life was now in danger, with her unable to find her way back to the real world which she was from.

Coraline was published in 2002 winning the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers. This movie adaptation is done by Henry Selick who was also the director of the 1993 The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Coraline was well received by critics and did averagely well in the box office. Henry Selick was poised to make another Neil Gaiman book adaptation named The Graveyard Book (which is one of my favorite Gaiman books).

The movie is now in what would be a development hell in Disney as of 2013, there is nothing new about the movie's production.