Wildwood Review

Wildwood is Laika’s sixth feature film, and their first since 2019’s Missing Link. The illustrious studio delivers a dark epic fantasy.

Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a young girl living in Portland, Oregon. She ignores her parents’ warnings not to take her brother Mac outside, leading to the baby being taken by a murder of crows into the Impassable Wilderness. When Prue enters the woods surrounding the city, she finds a strange fantasy world filled with talking animals and is teetering on the edge of war. She has to navigate a dangerous world as she searches for her brother.

Laika’s reputation is second-to-none. They are seen as a prestigious studio, with all their films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, although Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link were box-office bombs. Wildwood has received near-universal acclaim from critics and fantastic scores on IMDb and Letterboxd, but it will need a box office turnaround to be a financial success, like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Elemental. Wildwood is clearly the frontrunner for the Best Animated Film prize at the 99^th Academy Awards.

Laika has made mature films with Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, and Wildwood is their most mature yet. It earned a PG-13 rating in the US and 12A in the UK. It’s not a film for younger or more sensitive children due to the violence and depiction of war. This was a film that opened with a suicide, and it was a dark and sorrowful tale. Death was treated with weight; it was tragic and painful as characters experienced the horrors of war. There were moments in Wildwood that made it feel like the stop motion version of a Hayao Miyazaki movie.

Wildwood would have fitted in Miyazaki’s filmography, with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke being the best comparisons. Wildwood has a young female protagonist who’s thrust into a world at war and facing environmental damage. Prue had a straightaway goal, but ended up getting entangled in Wildwood’s conflicts.

Prue was a great character. She was determined, clever, and resourceful, even when she was in her new surroundings. Yet Prue wasn’t a flawless character because she was desperate, pleaded for help, and was mean to her classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay). This made her feel more human as she went through a gruelling quest.

Wildwood had a great villain with Alexandra, the Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan). She was a monster who was prepared to do reprehensible actions, but she was someone who suffered a lot. Alexandra’s actions couldn’t be justified, but they were understandable because grief and tragedy had blackened her soul. Despite her evil, Alexandra’s humanity did shine through because she wanted to be a mother again. She could act nice and gentle when she needed to. Alexandra acted like The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when she was with Curtis because she was trying to entice the boy into her army.

Wildwood was a rich fantasy world. There were shades of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Redwall, Stardust and the aforementioned works of Miyazaki, and it put its own spin on things. I loved the Victoriana aesthetic: it’s how I imagined Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. If Laika needs an idea for a future project, I have a suggestion. A lot was going on because of the various factions, the goals, and action or in some cases, inaction. It made the world engaging.

Being a Laika movie, the animation was second-to-none. It was a beautifully crafted film with every shot and scene being something to marvel at. It was a film that was grand in scale; it had many fantastic locations, whether it was the city of Portland, the quaintness of South Wood, or more fantastical locations like the Principality of the Birds. The film had a massive battle that could rival any big-budget live-action fantasy in terms of action and grandeur. Wildwood had a reported budget of $100 million, and every penny was clearly on display.

Whilst Wildwood was a dark story, it was not devoid of lightness and wonder. There were plenty of sight gags like showing Portland as a hipster’s Mecca, and Prue trying to get through the crowds in the Governor’s mansion. There was quite a bit of animal-based humour due to many of the residents of Wildwood being, well, animals. An aerial battle was exhilarating and wondrous for Prue and the audience.