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Blast From The Past Reviews: Coraline
Image Credit: Focus Features
Loading...I have never wanted to have kids of my own.
Growing up, I certainly never realized it wasn’t an option, though. I just figured it was part of the way life works out. You get to be an adult, you get married, and then you have some kids. I just thought that was how the whole system worked, and it was inescapable unless you just never found a mate.
It wasn’t until my early 20’s when I met some fellow older adults who had intentionally childless lives that I learned the whole exercise was optional. You could totally live a fulfilling life without reproducing? As someone to whom being responsible for children seemed like an absolute chore, this was a revelation. It was how I wanted my life to be.
Fast forward several years, and I met a glorious woman with whom I fell in love and who ALSO did not want to have kids. A match made in heaven, so they say. And here I am, several years later (I am actually writing this on the eve of the seventeenth anniversary of our first date), and I am living the dream.
None of this is meant to imply that I don’t LIKE children. On the contrary, I enjoy them a great deal, and I think I relate to them exceedingly well. I just never wanted my own. I do have a niece, though, and she is pretty cool, for a kindergartner. I look forward to seeing her and playing with her and watching her grow up.
And also, I REALLY look forward to being one of the people that introduces her to horror movies.
Now, I’ve written on this before, but growing up, I was raised on the Horror Icons of the 1980s. I was watching Jason and Michael and Chucky flay and slay their way through victims when I was in the single digits years old. That’s… not how it works anymore, it seems. Parents in 2026 frown on that kind of child rearing. You can’t just sit a six year old down to watch Friday The 13th Part 2 anymore. But you DO want to get there eventually!
(When is the appropriate age for showing a kid Halloween? Like, twelve now? I don’t know)
So what do you do? You’ve got to find some 101 level horror options. Kids films that have some fright and bite to them, but won’t emotionally traumatize a kiddo.
That finally brings us to today’s outing: Coraline. Coraline is the stop-motion animated tale of young Coraline Jones as she and her parents move into a creepy apartment building. The neighbors all seem to be freaks, and Coraline herself is a little standoff-ish, but that might be expected when you see how her parents treat her. They have no time for their daughter; they brush off her desires and concerns, and they scold her for being, well, a kid.
In the new apartment, Coraline finds a wallpaper-over’ed door that she eventually talks her mom into opening. And at night, this door leads to an alternate reality where her “other mother” and “other father” dote on her and give her everything she wants. Everything off-putting about Coraline’s reality is transformed and better behind this door.
But of course, it’s not as good as it seems, and Other Mother offers Coraline the opportunity to stay forever… all she has to do is give up her own eyes!
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ Coraline is a very nice introduction to scary movies for kids. Since we don’t live in a society where it is acceptable to start seven year olds off with classic slasher movies, Coraline is something you can show your [probably?] nine or ten year old to get them acclimated to the idea of films being a little frightening. Coraline isn’t terrifying or anything, but for modern kids, it’s a solid first outing into the idea that being scared can be fun.
+ The stop motion animation is outstanding. The movie is so fluid and crisp, and it had to have taken forever to get perfect. It almost makes A Nightmare Before Christmas look rudimentary. I was consistently wowed by how amazing Coraline looks; I would take this over CGI animation any day.
– Obviously the biggest down is that this is a Neil Gaiman property that has been adapted to cinema. And as legendary as Gaiman is as a writer, he has since proven to be something of a sex pest and an abuser. So supporting anything of his feels squiggy to me. There are degrees of being able to separate art from the artists, of course, but even if you are able to do that, you are still left with this… feeling that you are doing something inappropriate.
– The story is well imagined and creative, sure, but it’s also just… okay. The tale did not really floor me. A lot of the characters felt like plot devices that didn’t feel natural to the world, and Wybie takes until the very end of the movie to feel truly relevant and like he had a place. Again, this is a kids’ movie so I guess intricate plot isn’t necessary, but that’s no reason to do stuff just to do it, either.
