From Page to Screen
Coraline the movie

by Claire E. Gross

Directed and rewritten for the screen by Henry Selick, Coraline the movie succeeds on just about every level, with savvy changes, ominous pacing, and meticulous detailing. From Bruno Coulais’s brilliant lullaby-gone-wrong soundtrack to the twinkling stars and flitting hummingbirds of the alternate world’s nightscape, every aspect of the movie heightens the dreamlike, foreboding atmosphere and places viewers inescapably inside the world of the story.

The movie follows the same premise that drives Neil Gaiman’s novel. Recently relocated into a new house, with two distracted parents and fantastically odd fellow tenants living above and below, all Coraline wants is a little attention. But no. Go explore, her mother tells her, and, grumpily, she does. Coraline discovers a little door that leads to an alternate house, with alternate parents and tenants, much more doting and fun than the real ones. It’s a dream come true, until Coraline discovers that, to keep it, she must stay forever and allow her eyes to be replaced with buttons to match the rest of the world’s inhabitants. There then follows a terrifying showdown between Coraline and her “other mother,” the power behind the alternate world.

The biggest change is the addition of a new character, Wybie (sympathetically voiced by Robert Bailey Jr.), whose grandmother owns the house. That same grandmother, it turns out, lost a twin sister to the other mother long ago; and it is from her belongings that Wybie finds a doll, made in Coraline’s image, purported to be the other mother’s spy in the real world. The logic of that is slightly suspect, but it makes for a particularly skin-crawling motif; each time the screen zoomed in on the doll’s button eyes, I was sure that this would be the time they showed some sign of life. Wybie himself serves primarily as exposition, dropping tidbits about the history of the house, his family, and anything else that needs telling, but he is also an early warning sign — if the audience needed one — of the other mother’s monstrosity, as his doppelganger in the alternate world is mute. Perhaps more telling is that Coraline, who complains that the real Wybie talks too much, reacts to this version with approval; no idealized childhood innocent here.

Dakota Fanning does an excellent job of voicing Coraline, playing up the capriciousness and obstinate bravery of a character who leads with her id. Teri Hatcher conveys both the distracted, frustrated affection of Coraline’s real mother and the poisonous sweetness of her other mother with admirable nuance; the characters almost sound like the same person, and yet the gulf between them is obvious — and chilling. John Hodgman is an amiable father in both incarnations, tense (in the real world) and flamboyant (in the other), but always less vivid than the mother, which, in this case, is as it should be. Ian McShane as crazy circus master Mr. Bobinsky and comedic duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as the washed-up elderly performers Misses Forcible and Spink are simply a delight to behold; their energetic, quirky performances are amply matched by the exaggerated animation techniques that bring each to life.

Selick also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the visual similarities are obvious, but Coraline is so much more. Using a combination of animation and stop-motion techniques (actual, physical puppets and sets), Coraline is beautifully, artistically visualized, from the lonely, fog-encrusted landscape of the opening scenes to the phantasmagoric nighttime capers in the bright gardens of the alternate world. The 3D effects are a nice gimmick, effective in enhancing the more fantastic scenes, but they pale in comparison to the creepy, all-encompassing artistry of the whole. Details like an actual gravy train and a piano that plays the player contribute to the stunning realization of Gaiman’s vision; the literal unraveling of the alternate world at the end is both cathartic and visually unique.

It’s worth noting that Coraline is genuinely scary on levels ranging from the creepy-crawly (a menacing mechanical hand) to the more symbolic (a mother who morphs into a soul-sucking jailor), and anyone who brings small children to the theater expecting a rollicking kiddie adventure film is in for an unpleasant surprise. But for those who enjoyed the book — and even for those who didn’t — this adaptation is a gorgeously visualized bit of storytelling that balances faithfulness to the original with cinematic innovation.

Claire E. Gross is assistant editor of The Horn Book Magazine.

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