A Trip Down the Fabric Hole with Coraline (2009)

Today I decided to watch this animated movie that I've heard very mixed things about. What better way to find out what it's really like than to watch it yourself? Coraline is about a girl who moves into a new home. Just like most new homes for kids, this house is unfamiliar, and hides a terrible secret... of course. As it turns out, this horrible secret is actually quite real and hides behind a small wallpapered over door. Do you dare take the trip down the rabbit fabric hole? I did, and you can learn what I found after the jump!


I wasn't sure what to expect from Coraline because I'd heard such mixed things about it. Some people liked it, others not so much. But I never really got any specifics as to why or why not. I had heard that it was pretty creepy, and on the Totally Rad Show they said it was possibly a little disturbing. But it was such a long time ago that I watched that review, I really didn't remember much about it.

As it turns out, they were kind of right, and it is pretty creepy. When Coraline ventures to the other side of the hidden passage, she finds a sort of mirror world in which everything of her life seems a lot better than it is in the real world. Her bitchy mom is actually nice, her work-a-holic father only wants to play music and have fun. But not is all as it seems. For one thing, all the people there have buttons sewed into their heads where their eyes should be. That's a little creepy to be sure. And as the movie progresses, it just gets creepier and creepier. Now it's never so over the top that I don't think it's suitable for kids. Kids are tough these days. I think it's more the adults who will get more into this movie as you think about the ramifications of some of the small situations.

Now I want to stop myself here, as I feel like I'm kind of overselling it. This movie was good, but not great. One of the first things that stuck out to me is that the stop motion used to animate the characters isn't as smooth as I would have liked. Sometimes it felt a little jerky and not very fluid. Also, the movie takes quite a while to get going. The setup and build-up before the other world starts even hinting at going sour is quite long and I really wasn't enjoying myself that much. Once it started into the creep factor though, it picked up quickly and I had fun with it for the rest of the movie.

One interesting thing for me was the art style. It's really weird! At first I didn't like it. This may have to do with how boring the real world is at the start. In the end though, it won me over. Especially while Coraline is in the other world, it really worked. It has the tendency to be a very dark atmosphere where things start to glow with black light or the odd thing here and here being very vibrant. The shot above illustrates this perfectly.

If you like yourself some animated movies, and like movies like Nightmare Before Christmas, you'll probably like this too. It's not as good as Nightmare, but I think I enjoyed it more than Corpse Bride, another gloomy stop motion movie. Overall I thought it was a positive experience in which the good outweighs the bad. Keep in mind though, most of the issues I had with it I feel are mainly on a personal taste level, which might mean none of them will apply to you.