Larry Carlin

Go see Travis Knight's "Wildwood." Go see it alone, with family, with kinds, with friends. Just go see it. It's phenomenal. It's the modern fairy tale we needed to see magic & love again. It's the most ambitious stop-motion animated film ever made. It has heart, it has grit, it has courage. It's one of those rare films that comes along and upends the medium by its pure honesty about what it's portraying. Everyone knows how time-consuming stop-motion animation is, so the only think I'm going to say about it, is that sometimes there are dozens of characters on screen and all of them move, all of them have that magical realism about them. The amount of work that went into the flow of this film is magnificent. It's a film that is beautifully shot. Cinematography: awesome. Score: awesome. Sound design, OMG, the sound design, it's so immersive. The story is wonderful, and as I've noted full of heart, its raw soul expression of imagination, of creativity, of that which makes us human. It will make you feel things, and rage against rage itself, against grief, against all those unfair horrors of life that make good people turn evil. The symbolism in this film is simply perfect. From the manipulative Alexandra, who is pure grief embodied & might be one of the best portrayals of a witch in art since The White Witch of Narnia, to the bureaucratic Roger Swindon, who is just the sort of administrative evil we all despise, villainy is real, it's true, and it's not expressed with some weird form of manipulative sympathy. That scene about couples being unable to have children but still having love that they must express unto the world. The toll it take, becuse it does take a toll on the future. Pure poetic brilliance. Prue McKeel, Curtis Mehlberg & the McKeel parents are all very well realized and humanly relatable. All the side characters are brilliant, and have their moment to shine. Who would have guessed I'd feel so much for a rat. Oh, Septima! One of the greatest secondary characters in the media. The cast's voice acting is brilliant. And that final battle. I can't tress to you how impressive it is. It's violent, it's bloody, it's cruel, it's so very very melancholy. And yet you watch it and reflect on the current state of our world and see that the metaphor it presents has been lost to storytellers today. I won't spoil the ending, but its pure love, pure hate, pure humanity fighting against itself. Nothing in the film is forced, not emotion, not ideology, not politics, not family, the setting is reflective of the story it's telling. Portland, Oregon is presented just as it is, from its ideology to it's flaws, to its intimate beauty. The narrative nuance of this film is deep, I can see books being written about it. I can't praise this film enough. Go see "Wildwood." People need to support genuine & honest art like this. I hope it makes all the money, & I hope Studio Laika gets all the awards for it, because frankly they simply deserve it. "Wildwood" is 10/10 for me, & worthy of all the praise it's gonna get.