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An example of the meticulous craftwork required to make Wildwood
Photo: Laika
Wildwood
Directed by Travis Knight
Rated PG-13
Rescued 23 October 2026
#WildwoodMovie
Wildwood abounds with relentlessly ambitious storytelling.
Go Outside
See Wildwood on the biggest screen available. (Hint: It’s not at home.) For one thing – and for the love of pure cinema – the cinematography is by the incomparable Caleb Deschanel! The richness of the details, the colors, the divine intricacy of the world building filling each and every frame deserve to be seen in a large theatre with superb sound.
This is not the usual animated fare by any conceivable standard. This is a next-level experience that was 16 years in the making thanks to the painstaking stop-motion animation process used by Laika and Travis Knight, the studio’s CEO and the movie’s director. It’s also longer than the typical animated movie, clocking in at 130 minutes, and it sports a relatively imposing PG-13 rating.
It’s based on the first of three Wildwood children’s books written by Colin Meloy (from the rock band The Decemberists) and illustrated by Carson Ellis. Those illustrations serve to inform the movie’s look. As it happens, the story takes place in Portland, Oregon, which is also home to Laika. It’s like a fairy tale wedding of creative forces.
The first book was first published in 2011. And yet the movie’s been in “production” – as Knight himself sees it – for 16 years thanks to an unpublished manuscript crossing his desk. He knew back then it was a story he had to bring to his world of sophisticated, hand-made puppetry.
In his journey to the big screen, he’s assisted by people working at the topmost levels of their crafts. And he’s got an A-list voice cast that includes Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Tom Waits, Mahershala Ali and Amandla Stenberg.
Dad and Mac
Image: Laika
The Impassable Wilderness
Laika movies – as beautiful as they are visually – tend to be darker thematically.
Wildwood fits right in; it’s a grim story, hence that rating. It has some intense moments and some violence that’s a step or two beyond the normal fare. And yet it’s also in keeping with the tone of those classic Grimm fairy tales.
It’s all in service to building a world in which the characters (even the evil ones) come to life with a massive amount of heart. Taking it from a different angle, the story itself treats the darkness differently from most stories. In the wild tale of Wildwood, the protagonist lives in a thriving, nutty, colorful world (that’d be Portland), but she’s drawn into a world of darkness that carries with it a dark name: The Impassable Forest.
It’s a place where most people dare not enter. Check that. It’s a place where most people cannot enter. Only those possessing the power of magic – or traveling with one who does – are allowed inside.
That protagonist is a girl named Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee). She’s the product of a couple hippies. Bless ’em both, her parents (voiced by Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson), have tried to instill in Prue a sense of the magical and that itself is one of the movie’s key themes.
So, from a certain point of view, Prue enters a dark world. It’s not a world of light being threatened by darkness, strictly speaking.
Why go there? Because Mac, her little brother, a toddler, was kidnapped by a murder of crows. Can it get any more Grimm than that?
Yes. Much more.
Prue’s parents are an open-minded, liberal hippie couple. Even so, they will not let Prue take Mac outside. It’s not allowed. Ever. He’ll be homeschooled. He’ll learn to play the best solo sport ever, hacky sack (a product of Oregon City, Oregon, by the way). Even if he somehow manages to build a relationship with an “outsider,” he, she or they could move in and live with them.
But why?
Well, in a moment of extreme desperation, Prue’s parents made a deal with a devil, a woman named Alexandra, the Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan). It’s a deal in which the loving couple could keep their first-born. But their second born belongs to her.
It gets even darker from there, with the storyline veering into the dark terrain of a boy lost in the forest and an automaton replica that refuses to continue on once it realizes his own dark truth of artificiality.
The beautiful little village
Image: Laika
The Natural World
Consider 2026 as the year movies got their ambition back. Hollywood need look no further than Wildwood and The Odyssey. On a smaller scale, Obsession and Backrooms brought filmmaking back to its basics while still leaving an indelible impression on viewers. On the other side of the world, Bollywood has Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, a risky endeavor based on a beloved ancient Hindi poem and also the most expensive movie ever to come out of India with a two-part production budget of $500 million. As a shameless plug, also throw in Masters of the Universe, the underrated reboot directed by Wildwood’s own director, Travis Knight (screenwriter Chris Butler also adapted both for the big screen).
Laika movies always have a really strong emotional core. In particular, consider the heavy themes of Kubo and the Two Strings, for one. Coraline is another. Wildwood and its tale of finding a spiritual connection with the natural world is no different.
Wildwood exudes adult sensibilities in pretty much every way; it’s in some respects the ultimate tale of growing up, with notions of childhood and adulthood told in the most fantastical of terms. Strangely enough, it all goes to reinforce the notion this one’s less for the kids and more for the adults who need to become kids again.
Alongside Prue and her transformation from rebellious kid to young adult with eyes wide open is her schoolmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), a nerd who’s into roleplaying games who also gets swept up in the magical transition from his initial state of dork to a seasoned veteran of adventure who fully understands the difference between the fantasy of roleplaying heroism and the reality of heroic actions made on a blood-soaked battlefield.
At times, Wildwood riffs on thoughts found in Zootopia, as Prue is introduced to the horrifying, soul-sucking evils of the bureaucracy that tries to run the Impassable Forest. It’s great stuff and spot on. To that end, crates labeled “urgent” are seen being carried on the backs of slow-moving turtles.
Even in the darkness, there’s plenty of humor to be found.
The bureaucracy at “work” in Portland’s historic Pittock Mansion
Image: Laika
• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.
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