REVIEW: "Wildwood" (2026)

(Source: IMDb) 

For more than three decades now, we’ve been living in a landscape of visual worldbuilding and storytelling across film, television, and all forms of media. Specific examples have taken years to develop and produce, including Peter Jackson and company’s seven-year journey in adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary world of Middle-earth for the big screen with The Lord of the Rings, or James Cameron and his team spending two decades bringing the planetary world of Pandora and its residents to life in three Avatar pictures. 

On the flip side, it's refreshing, even encouraging, to know there are filmmakers and artists out there who prefer telling stories practically and by hand. Likewise, the duration of production and anticipation leading up to their respective release dates is just as (if not more) engaging, especially if it's deeply personal. Hayao Miyazaki took what ended up being about a decade between his reported last film The Wind Rises and his welcome return with The Boy and the Heron. This year, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour take on Homer’s centuries-old The Odyssey set a benchmark for 70mm IMAX photography and screenings. Not to mention a lot of unexpected staying power. But all that practicality and ingenuity is just surface if there's no heart, emotion, or substance at the center of it. (Not to say that any of these films lack that, which they don't.) 

Which brings us to Laika. Not long after the release of their debut feature film, Coraline (an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s horror novel), in 2009, the stop-motion animation studio (based in Portland, Oregon) bought the rights to the 2011 novel Wildwood, written by Portland native Colin Meloy and illustrated by his spouse Carson Ellis. It would take nearly sixteen years for the studio to make and complete their cinematic version of Meloy and Ellis’s epic novel, following subsequent films about a misfit boy who sees ghosts and zombies (ParaNorman), cardboard-wearing critters in a steampunk Victorian town (The Boxtrolls), a young samurai in Japan (Kubo and the Two Strings), and a gentle giant of a sasquash (Missing Link). 

Directed by Laika CEO Travis Knight (who also made Kubo, as well as the live-action tentpoles Bumblebee and Masters of the Universe) and released independently (with distribution through Fathom Entertainment), Wildwood is easily the most ambitious project they've made, as well as the longest stop-motion film to date, with a runtime of 2 hours and 10 minutes (about the same length as Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke). It’s also the most personal film they've ever made, with familiar sites that local Portland residents will recognize. 

It's clear from the trailers and the marketing that the filmmakers and artists really put their hearts and souls into this project. The three main trailers represent distinct emotional responses, including wonder, beauty, and thrills. But the real question is, would the film itself—the story, the substance—actually be good? For one thing, the marketing seemed to work, because the characters and worldbuilding in this story are instantly and thoroughly captivating, allowing audiences to experience this journey along with these characters and seeing what this world is presently (i.e., woods in ruins) and what it used to be. 

Our main character is a teenage girl named Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), whose journey is set in motion when her baby brother, Mac, is kidnapped by a murder of crows, and her friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) tags along with her into the woods on the outskirts of town to get her brother back. 

(Source: IMDb) 

Influences for this film version range from Jim Henson (Labyrinth) to Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), as well as J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings, which Knight has compared this story to, but in stop-motion form) and C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), the latter of which this story feels more like. The eponymous “Impassable Woods” is a world of talking anthropomorphic animals co-existing with human beings. Aside from the Portland residents, there are coyotes (led by Carey Mulligan’s formidable human Alexandra), birds, bandits (led by Mahershala Ali’s Brenden), and mystics, each representing distinct cultures with a collective amount of history and conflict within this magical woodland realm. 

Several sequences are astounding and wondrous, including Prue flying on the giant eagle known as the General (reportedly Laika's most complex stop-motion character to date, voiced by Angela Bassett). There’s also a 12-minute battle sequence (a massive element that hasn't been done in stop-motion before—certainly not to this degree), as well as moments of genuine, grounded humor that are well-balanced with everything else without talking down to viewers. (There were genuine audience reactions during the screening I attended on opening weekend.) 

I can only imagine how incredible and surreal it must have been for the cast to hear their voices in there respective characters after last recording their dialogue (reportedly) five years before the film’s eventual release. Ditto the artists and crew when they got to see the incredible costumes, production design, and art direction up on the big screen. (The visual motif of plants, especially the “green ivy,” sort of reminded me of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.) You’ll also want to stay through the credits on this one. 

Another thing that makes this distinct is the fact that, unlike their previous PG-rated films, Wildwood is Laika's first PG-13-rated release. The MPA's reasons include “strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language.” Interestingly, the last stop-motion flick to get this rating was Wes Anderson's equally-ambitious Isle of Dogs in 2018. (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s surreal and depressing Anomalisa received an R-rating three years before that.) 

To be fair, Wildwood’s dark fantasy elements are no different than those featured in several films that came out during the 1980s (i.e., Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, The Secret of NIMH). Still, today’s audiences will need to consider age-appropriateness, especially for younger kids. There’s genuine danger and menace, as well as powerful and haunting imagery, throughout this grand adventure full of characters we come to care about. The darkness growing in the woods is partly due to Alexandra’s sad and tragic backstory (i.e., what she lost and couldn’t let go of), including dark magic she turned to through her grief, leading to a misguided and paganistic worldview. Not to mention a revelation, regarding mistakes/choices certain characters regret (no spoilers), that connect everything. 

A recurring motif throughout this story is how far characters are willing to go for who and what they love (parallel to the massive amount of work and time that was put into making this film), either for the wrong reasons or for the right reasons. Moments of Prue riding her bicycle are nostalgic, yet it’s the theme of how complicated growing up can be (more specifically, living with regrets, and recognizing there is still magic and wonder in an equally complicated world) that is stronger. Ditto communities coming together as they realize they all have a part in this world. 

As such, Wildwood features subversive visual metaphors of death and life, as well as reexaminations of the notion of “happily ever after.” (How about “happily ever now”?) It’s a powerful, immersive, and thoroughly involving film, and nothing short of a masterpiece. (Sixteen years goes a long way, and it really shows.) It may be the most amazing film I've seen all year. Just maybe, and more.