‘Wildwood’ film review: The magic of stop-motion animation

In a time of widespread AI usage, a strained economy and a bleak worldview, Wildwood (2026) provides a sincere, epic piece of art that was made intricately by hand over 16 years. Crafted by the incredibly talented stop-motion animation studio, Laika, this is by far their most ambitious and important project yet. 

Laika first began development on Wildwood one year after their first film Coraline (2009) released. Since then, the company has made and released four feature length, critically acclaimed stop-motion films all while working on Wildwood. That is a huge testament to the level of their creativity, talent and bandwidth. When they first began work on the film, the average cost of a movie ticket was $7.89. When the film was released this year in late October, the average cost of a ticket was $16.30. 

The sheer complexity and creativity of this film cannot be understated. What starts as a small family story in Portland, Oregon, unfolds into a mature story full of magic, grief and war. Due to the infinite possibilities of stop-motion animation, each wacky character in this film is so unique. 

From a brave teenage girl protagonist to a talking owl in a waistcoat, there is no shortage of amazing characters that required Laika to create over 142,000 facial expressions for this movie alone. Since the film was shot at 24 frames per second, 24 manipulations were needed for a character’s dialogue in just one second of screen time, sometimes capturing only several seconds of usable footage per week. 

The extraordinary cast of this film has big names like Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali and Angela Basset. Characters are supported by some lesser-known but nonetheless greatly skilled actors like Tom Waits, Jemaine Clement and Jake Johnson. The cast recorded their lines back in 2021, giving the animators time to craft the characters around the dialogue. I love this cast, but with a story and visuals like these, anybody could have voiced the characters and the movie still would have blown me away. 

Unfortunately, the film did not have much success at the box office. With such a long production and star studded cast, the production budget was around $100 million and has only made $35 million worldwide so far. 

I am saddened by this because there have been so many original, amazing films that have released to bad box office numbers, which will only result in studios not taking any big risks in the future. We, as a society, need these beautifully hand-crafted stories in order to keep dreaming big and exposing ourselves to art that will elevate us. 

Many people either don’t even know this film exists or don’t have the funds to go out to the theater. Wildwood had the disadvantage of releasing during a time of worldwide economic stress and a great year for cinema. After a certain point, most families can’t go to the theater every weekend, despite each film release being some of the best content Hollywood has made in years. With the rise of streaming, families pay ~$20 for countless movies on one streaming service instead of ~$20 for a single ticket to a single movie. While streaming is the more financially sound option, you cannot beat the grandeur of the theatrical experience. 

I absolutely loved Wildwood, as I have loved all of Laika’s previous films. The level of sheer creativity, stunning visuals and storylines is some of the best ever. It makes it even more impressive that these films were made painstakingly by hand over the course of years. 

This movie began development before generative AI was even a thought in most people’s minds, and was finally released when entire movies are being generated from a prompt. These stop-motion artists are vital to our culture and must be celebrated and supported. I truly hope that more people will go out to see this movie because it is so important for all of us to experience the wonder and hope that this film brings.