Wildwood, from Laika

It wasn't the dingoes that took Prue McKeel’s baby brother, Mac. It was the crows. Don’t blame McKeel. Crows are often scary in the movies, like in Hitchcock’s The Birds or the recent Winter of the Crow. Fittingly, they travel in “murders”—and this murder is really nasty. Nevertheless, McKeel follows them into “the Impassable Woods,” but somehow, she passes through the magic barrier in Travis Knight’s Laika-produced stop-motion animated feature Wildwood, which opens in theaters this Friday.

Frankly, the macabrely enchanted woods outside Portland look less groan-inducing than Knight’s ultra-woke portrayal of the city. McKeel’s parents are as hippy-dippy as they come, yet they oddly intend to home-school her brother. Frankly, they seem wildly protective of Mac, insisting Prue must never take him out of the house. Of course, parents were meant to be disobeyed, so when she is left to babysit, she starts showing Mac the great big world of Portland, until a murder of crows swoops down and carries him away.

Desperate to recover Mac, McKeel follows the crows into the woods, through a magic portal, with the awkwardly smitten Curtis (often spelled “Kurtis”) Mehlberg following along after her. Understandably, the fantasy world they barge into is a little too real for the geeky role-playing gamer, especially when he wakes up in the den of Alexandra, the Dowager Governess. She commanded the crows to kidnap Mac, because she intends to sacrifice the toddler in the ritual that holds potentially grim consequences for the other residents of the Woods.

Unfortunately, McKeel finds the rival human settlements and the Avian Principality (which expelled the crows long ago) are too fractured and factional to unite against Alexandra and her murder of crows and army of coyotes. Consequently, McKeel believes her best hopes might lay with Iphigenia, the wise sage, and her fellow druid-like elders.

Screenwriter Chris Butler’s adaptation of Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis’s children’s novel recycles many traditional fantasy motifs, but in ways genre fans will appreciate. If anything, Knight and his animators age-up the story, leaning into the dark enchantment and never sugar-coating the violence. This film will be far too intense for the majority of younger viewers, very much like Bakshi’s 1978 Lord of the Rings.

In fact, despite the source material, Wildwood seems produced for adult animation fans, who will appreciate the Laika studio’s richly immersive world-building and their painstaking stop-motion animation. There are multiple showstopper scenes that should easily secure Wildwood a nomination for best animated feature.

Visually, the film is undeniably arresting, but Knight’s inconsistent pacing and the 132-minute running time could have benefited from a judicious trim. However, it is easy to see why Knight and editor Christopher Murrie-Green resisted cutting scenes that reflect such detailed craftsmanship and tireless effort.

Arguably, the enchanted world the animators created often overshadows the narrative, but for animation fans, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is even more impressive knowing this world actually exists, in a way, realized through Laika’s handcrafted figures, scale models, and sound stages. Enthusiastically recommended for the atmosphere and artistry, Wildwood opens this Friday (10/23) in theaters, including the Regal Times Square in New York.