Yesterday, my friend and I found ourselves in a common predicament. School let out at 2:30, and we had to be back by 7:15 for our school’s annual theater production. Bear in mind that we live 30 minutes away from the school, so accounting for driving time, we would have 3 hours and 45 minutes at home. However, I must say I had a much better time than if I had bummed around at home. I decided to invite a friend who lives around the area and the three of us saw Wildwood at our theater of choice.

Plot and such

My mother told me a few months ago about Colin Meloy from the Decemberists and how he wrote a book, and it was also her who informed me that this movie was based on said book. I haven’t read it so I won’t know a lot about the prominent changes, but the film is about Prue McKeel living in Portland, Oregon, with her baby brother, Mac, and parents.

While taking Mac out to play behind her parents’ back, he is kidnapped by a murder of crows, so Prue and her annoying classmate Curtis make their way into the “impassable wilderness” and are almost immediately separated, where their respective perspectives are treated as the “A” and “B” plots. I quite enjoyed how it cut between them and felt it was perfectly timed so as to not drag out either of the characters’ stories.

Prue is picked up by a mailman and the two pass through the Avian Principality. Then, he takes her to the governor’s manor, where she is promptly arrested to hide her entrance into the forest as an outsider. She escapes after receiving a letter to meet with an Avian prince, who explains the motives of the dowager governess Alexandra. Alexandra is the one who imprisoned Curtis and is responsible for kidnapping Mac.

The story goes that Alexandra and the governor were married and had a son named Alexei. One fateful day, they all rode on horses and Alexei went ahead and detoured from the path, where he fell off a cliff and died. Grief struck, Alexandra used black magic to create a mechanical version of Alexei, who learned his true nature and committed suicide. Alexandra was arrested and exiled after it was revealed that Alexei was made through black magic.

Prue finally makes it to the governess’ domain, but eventually is convinced to return home without Curtis nor Mac. Her parents reveal that, faced with infertility, they had made a deal with Alexandra in order to have children, and in exchange, they would give their second-born child to Alexandra. Prue returns to the forest to once and for all save Mac. She meets with the Mystics, a group devoted to meditating around the oldest tree in the forest, and it reveals that Alexandra intends to sacrifice Mac to control the forest’s ivy, in an attempt to recover Alexei’s body.

Meanwhile, Curtis escapes prison alongside the bandits with help from Septima, a rat voiced by Awkwafina (I know right?), and Prue reunites with him. A large battle between the bandits, Mystics and Avians against the governess’s army ensues, which had my mouth agape through the better part of it. Prue, in a last-ditch effort to rescue Mac from sacrifice, harnesses nature and impales Alexandra, saving them both. The two return home, along with Curtis, and the film ends.

Thoughts

Just from reading about the production of this film, you can really get a sense of its scale and quality. At times, I didn’t even realize it was stop-motion, due to its grandeur and attention to detail. Some scenes even had me thinking to myself: “how’d they do this?”, such as the large battle scene towards the end. I have no idea how the wizards at Laika were able to make stop-motion fire. In the governor’s mansion, two workers collide and hundreds of papers fall down. Scenes like these make me absolutely clueless but awestruck all the same.

The film altogether was soooooo so good. Aside from being a wonder of animation and a testament to human artistic talent, it tells a remarkable story about death, grief, and desperation. Plus, it features Charlie Day as an anthropomorphic coyote. I saw someone on Letterboxd say it was a “big middle finger to AI” or something along those lines and I couldn’t agree more. Films such as this can only be made by human hands, in over a decade and a half of work. I hope this film does exceptional, and it seems like it’s on pace to in the box office. The score was amazing. I gave it a four and a half only because some of the dialogue felt a little stereotypical and corny, and I don’t know how much of it is from the novel or if it is intentionally so to subvert expectations down the line, but other than that it is perfect.