As much as I want to try and keep my expectations in check with this one, I can’t lie: It’s another team-up between a director and writer that I have immense respect for as creatives. Henry Selick, as I imagine he was for a lot of alternative kids out there, was my gateway drug when it comes to stop-motion animation, and his work on Coraline is what got me to fall in love with the works of Neil Gaiman. And while he’s also in the writer’s room here, he’s sharing it with Jordan Peele, one of modern horror’s most vital mainstream voices, and someone who has already got a certified winner under his belt this year in Nope. With how much import I place on names whenever looking at films on here, I went into this hoping for a ‘two great tastes’ situation, and honestly, that is definitely what I got… although it took me a bit to lock in with it.
After the last thirteen years of absence, it’s so damn good to see Selick’s animation style again. The moody and Gothic colour palette, the otherworldly world-building, the angular character faces, the smooth-as-butter movements; it all looks fantastic. And yet I have some respect for Selick intentionally avoiding making it look perfect, purposely leaving in mistakes here and there. Thankfully, they’re not the kind of mistakes that can take a person out of the moment or anything, but they do help with that more organic feeling that I’ve previously mentioned liking about this style of animation. I mean, with how well the LEGO movies have done at mimicking stop-motion with CGI, I can understand why Selick would want to differentiate the two like this.
Then there’s what Peele brings to the table, both as a creative and as one of the title characters opposite Keegan-Michael Key. On the former point, this has all the cold-brick wokeness that has iconified Monkeypaw Productions, and if you think I’m saying that as an insult, you must be new here. Government welfare, the prison-industrial complex, gentrification, the public school system, council election rigging; there’s a lot of sociopolitical commentary in here, and it all fits quite well alongside the more spooky genre aesthetics. It reminded me of Laika’s ParaNorman in how it showed the supernatural and grotesque not as the enemy, but as an ally against the real enemy, which in this case is late-stage capitalism.
There’s also the casting here, which is basically wall-to-wall People Of Colour, and everyone does terrifically. Key and Peele aren’t what I’d call the most intimidating demons I’ve seen in a children’s film (hell, as a whole, this film doesn’t even reach Monkeybone levels of scary), but once it becomes clear that that’s entirely the point, their buddy chemistry is as tight as ever. Lyric Ross is all things teenaged and Afro-punk awesome as Kat, who does very well with her character’s survivor’s guilt, aided by Angela Bassett in another warming maternal role as Sister Helley.
And opposite her, we have Sam Zelaya as Raรบl, the only comfortable friend Kat has made at Catholic school, and also the film’s main trans representation. Said representation on its face is already cool, and again follows the tradition of films like ParaNorman in LGBTQ-friendly stop-motion, but specifically having the character be a trans boy makes it even better. Trans girls and women tend to crowd the conversation, both from the advocates and from the genital examiners, so it’s nice to see a change of pace.
As I mentioned above, I don’t find this film to be that spoopy, but the further along the story it went, the less that wound up bothering me. It’s another case of a emotional family drama being presented as a more straight-forward horror flick, except unlike stuff like Malignant and Before I Wake, this is a lot more conscious of that fact. Along with its cultural aesthetics, its political salience, and its approach to Gothic visuals that make Tim Burton’s comments from a few years ago seem even sillier than they already did, this is a story about loss and the relationship between parent and child, and not just to do with Kat and her parents either. When it digs deeper into that aspect of the story, that’s when it hits its strongest moments, like when Kat directly confronts her own self-image in an exquisite bit of silhouette animation.
While I hesitate to say that this is the best work from Selick or Peele, it most certainly holds up to their respective standards. The animation is excellent, the casting doubly so, the Afropunk-heavy soundtrack is awesome, it speaks truth to power like a Monkeypaw production should, and it’s got some real emotional resonance to it. This would make for a great double-feature with ParaNorman or even Nightmare Before Christmas.
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