Review of Coraline (2009) by Alanis C — 20 Dec 2017

"Coraline" is a 100 minute 3D stop-motion, dark fantasy horror film released on February 5, 2009 and it is based on Neil Gaiman's novel, "Coraline". This film was directed and produced by Henry Selick and also produced by Claire Jennings, Bill Mechanic and Mary Sandell.

The movie was released on the US on February 6, 2009, making 16 million during the opening weekend and 124 million worldwide. This production gained a large number of awards like "Annie Awards", "Academy Awards" and a "Golden Globe" nomination.

The film is based on a girl who recently moved to a new house in Oregon. Coraline has typical family problems where parents are too occupied for their children, and that makes her sad, lonely and frustrated. By feeling this way, she starts exploring her new house trying to find something fun in addition to her neighbors. In all of this situation, Caroline is being watched by an evil and hungry witch by means of a doll that looks exactly like Caroline but with button eyes.

As the movie goes on, she finds a mysterious key and starts visiting a "perfect" parallel world in her "dreams", where everything is what she has always wanted. But there were some sort of things that were very strange and dark in this new world, so she starts questioning things. When she finally got some answers from three dead kids, she starts to plan her scape doing everything she can and turning into a menace to the witch. In order to get rid of that world she needs to pass a lot of tests and hard work, because if not, she would be stuck in it forever and the evil witch will feed on her for the rest of her life. At this point she understand how much her real family means to her despite every problem and that she would give her all to get her parents back. This motivation gives Coraline a touch of strength, and with the help of some friends she starts this horrendous adventure.

The footage in this movie is amazing. It takes the stop-motion to whole new level, using 3D printers and having different parts of just one character body to make everything more realistic. The film involved 450 people to help with the project, including all types of professionals. Another thing that makes the movie environment is the stunning music performed by Michele Marina, John Linnel, Kent Melton and Bruno Coulais.

In my personal opinion this is a tremendous movie not only because the spectacular footage but because of the amazing lesson and its way to show it. One of them is the reality that we are living now days, were parents don't have enough time for their kids because they have other priorities, causing a worrisome impact on kids, and leading them to a rebel status or to do dangerous things without their parents noticing because they aren't present. But also it let the kids to understand that their parents do love them despite they are always present or not and try to understand that they are working for the future of the family. Another moral the movie shares, is the importance of valuing the things we already have and to love our family the way it is. To not get blinded by material things, because at the end it is what it is, material.

It is a story where all kind of audience can get identified and it attracts a lot of people of different ages. Even though it looks like a children movie it isn't that innocent or sane as it looks. The movie could be a little traumatic for some kind of minor audience because it has very impacting scenes. This quality is a very distinctive one, because usually cartoon movies or this types of films where there are no actors, can lead us to automatically think that this is just another kids movie, which can be a good and a bad thing. A good one because the adult audience can get interested in the film and they can talk about it to others and gain viewers. And a bad thing because parents can take their little kids to watch it, thinking it won't scare them. Of course everybody reacts different and there are kids who totally love the film.

The end of the movie can make us feel that a sequel can come out of it. The film let to our imagination what finally happened with certain things that were obviously unconcluded. They can make a second movie and it would have a lot of success if it come like the first one or even better. But of course, the making of a movie like that isn't totally easy and it takes years to complete it, so lets hope for a sequel in an near future.