Review of ParaNorman (2012) by Connor R — 08 Aug 2013

I had a judgment of what this film would be when I went in, and chances are you will judge it too. And that's the genius of this film, because it proves those judgments wrong in the best way possible.

Every aspiring writer should take note of this film as one of the great examples of subverting a trope or a genre. It could have so easily just been a very well written and funny version of a story you already recognized: your standard zombie film eaten by the plot of Hocus Pocus (1993) with a family friendly version of the kid from Sixth Sense (1999). If it wanted to do some extra credit, it could have used a little bit of light trope reversal for the sake of humor only, made the humans crowd around and beat up the zombies and make them scared. But by all accounts everybody knew the moral that the film was trying to tell us - that you shouldn't be judgmental of people that are different - and we all know how it's going to tell us - by having him save the day. He has the gift that can save the town from the zombies, and they'll all learn that Norman's gift is special, so they were wrong to call him a freak. I mean, how else can they tell that moral?

*spoilers here*.

That's where it completely turns its audience on the head. This writer, Chris Butler, subverted the trope, and in doing so made us completely reconceive the moral in a way that took it to the nth degree, and did it perfectly. We think that Norman will save the town from the zombies, and stop the witch. Then the film reveals that it's the *zombies* that need to be saved, from the *town*. And the witch, who hovered over the town with such villainy, was revealed to be nothing more than a little girl with about the same gift as Norman, and guilty of nothing more than being different. But that was enough for the zombies, once her prosecutors, to send her to death. And in her bitterness she punished her prosecutors to suffer the same fate that she did: to become different, and frightful in the eyes of the townpeople, and to face their fear, wrath and hatred, just as the prosecutors had done to the girl. You were enticed to believe that the hostility of the people against the zombies and the zombies apparent vulnerability against the townspeople, was just some kind of a joke. But it's not a joke; because intolerance made the town - and makes us - the true monsters. And instead of having to confront the ghost of this girl as a villain, Norman does the noble thing and confronts her as the tragic figure that she is, and helps her realize that her bitterness has made her as much a monster as the townspeople are, and what the zombies once were: because what is vengeance but an intolerance against your past transgressors? Or what is intolerance but an unwillingness to forgive others for their differences?

*end spoilers*.

It's such a rare feat for a genre to be flipped in such a way that made its message even clearer and more sound. There's a certain irony that this film is sometimes labeled as a kid's horror film. Parts of it are scary, and the style has a certain Burton-esque gothic quality to it, but the whole message of the film is *against* fear. If we fear those who are different, we can become monsters. And if those who are different are victims of a hateful world, they may become the monsters everyone thought they were. I cannot emphasize enough how much this film blew my away when I didn't expect it to at all. And that is the best kind of being blown away. Chris Butler must be a secret kind of genius, and I honestly think it was the best written film I had seen that year. I will stand by each of these five stars.