Beyond Fairytales: Why Wildwood is the Most Ambitious Animated Film of the Decade

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Sixteen years ago, Portland-based animation studio LAIKA optioned Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s beloved fantasy novel Wildwood, setting in motion a creative odyssey that has finally culminated in a staggering cinematic triumph. In an era where mainstream animation often defaults to slick, computer-generated uniformity and the looming specter of artificial intelligence threatens the very concept of handmade art, director Travis Knight and his army of artisans have delivered a profound, tactile masterpiece. Wildwood is not simply the best film LAIKA has ever produced—surpassing even the revered Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings—it is a towering achievement in the history of stop-motion animation, rightfully earning a rare and entirely justified five-star rating.   

The film’s premise hinges on the kind of dark, unapologetic fairytale logic that modern family features frequently shy away from. Twelve-year-old Prue McKeel (voiced with perfect, world-weary teenage ennui by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) has been explicitly forbidden by her parents from taking her infant brother Mac outside. When she inevitably breaks this rule, a literal murder of crows descends upon a local Portland playground with Hitchcockian menace, snatching the baby and carrying him off into the Impassable Wilderness.   

Driven by guilt and fierce familial devotion, Prue ventures into this forbidden, enchanted forest alongside her hopelessly nerdy, fantasy-obsessed classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay). What they discover is a breathtakingly realized hidden world where talking animals and mystic warriors exist in a fragile, uneasy harmony, and where a brewing civil war threatens to tear the wilderness apart.   

It is here that the film’s extraordinary ensemble cast breathes urgent life into the staggering visuals. Carey Mulligan delivers a chilling, tragic performance as Alexandra, the Dowager Governess. Exiled and driven mad by the grief of losing her own son, Alexandra has turned to dark magic and an army of impeccably costumed coyotes to execute a terrible vengeance. Mulligan anchors the film’s 12A certification (here in Ireland) with a vocal performance steeped in genuine sorrow and terrifying resolve.   

The supporting cast is equally stellar, elevating the quirky inhabitants of the woods into fully realized characters. Mahershala Ali is magnificent as Brendan, the swashbuckling Bandit King who takes Curtis under his wing, bringing an unexpected warmth and gravitas to the swashbuckling rogue. Awkwafina shines as a delightfully nimble rat named Septima, while Richard E. Grant’s turn as the wise old Owl Rex is a masterclass in haughty avian nobility. Even Tom Waits makes an unforgettable impression as Maksim, a menacing coyote soldier.  

But it is the animation—oh, the animation—that elevates Wildwood from a great story into a work of art. Along ith the likes of Aardman Animations (producers of Wallace and Gromit, Shawn the Sheep, etc), LAIKA has long been the gold standard for stop-motion, but the sheer scale and ambition on display here defy comprehension. The production utilized over 200 bespoke puppets and dozens of meticulously crafted practical sets, making it the studio's most sprawling endeavour to date. The level of detail is almost overwhelming: the puppets were engineered with internal mechanisms that allow animators to simulate breathing and muscle movement from the inside out, granting the characters a spark of life that feels remarkably organic.   

Every frame is an intricate painting you want to step inside. You can practically feel the damp moss of the Pacific Northwest, the rustle of the leaves, and the chill of the fog rolling over the bandit camps. The film's crowning technical achievement is a mind-boggling 12-minute battle sequence—the largest ever attempted in stop-motion—comprising over 400 shots. It is a brutal, chaotic, and jaw-dropping spectacle of clashing animal factions and sweeping swordplay that rivals the epic cinematic scale of The Lord of the Rings, yet is rendered entirely by hand, frame by painstaking frame.   

Wildwood does not talk down to its audience. It embraces its 12A rating by refusing to sanitize the realities of war, loss, and the heavy burdens of growing up. The violence is at times startlingly graphic for an animated feature, but it is never gratuitous; it serves to give the characters' choices genuine weight and consequence. It is a film that demands to be taken seriously, proving once again that animation is a medium capable of profound maturity, not merely a genre for toddlers.   

As the final credits roll—accompanied by a cheeky, defiant note declaring "This film was handmade in Oregon"—it is impossible not to feel a profound sense of awe. Wildwood is a dark, beautiful, and fiercely original cinematic triumph. It is a love letter to the weirdos, the outsiders, and the stubborn dreamers who still believe in the magic of making things by hand. In a disposable world, LAIKA has crafted a monument.