“Coraline” is one of those “kids” films that is downright terrifying. Do you remember your first time watching it? I was in the fourth grade and a very good friend of mine invited me and a few others over for a sleepover in October. Wanting to watch something scary, but too frightened and young for a “real” scary movie, we settled on “Coraline,” figuring: “It’s animated and only rated PG, how bad can it be?” Innocently, we began the movie.
None of us saw the ending that night; we turned it off in terror and shock halfway through.
I don’t think I saw the full movie until relatively recently, when I decided to revisit it in high school. “It’s only a kids movie! How scary can it be?” many may ask. To great surprise, it is quite frightening. Now, fifteen years after its initial release, I want to look back on this twisted “family” picture.
“Coraline” premiered in 2009 under Laika Studios (“ParaNorman”), adapted and directed by Henry Selick (director of the 1993 classic “The Nightmare Before Christmas”) and based on horror author Neil Gaiman’s (“Good Omens”) novella of the same name. It tells the story of a young girl, Coraline, who discovers a mysterious little door in her new home that leads to a parallel world where all seems perfect. In this “Other World,” she meets her “Other Mother” and “Other Father,” who appear kinder and more caring than her real parents, but with one major distinction: her “Other Parents” have buttons for eyes. As Coraline spends more time in this world, she watches it fall apart and reveal its dark, sinister nature. The “Other Mother” reveals her identity to be a witch named the Beldam, attempting to trap, steal and consume Coraline’s soul by sewing buttons over her eyes. Coraline, to rescue her real parents and other trapped souls, must bravely face a series of challenges that put a nightmarish twist on the “wonders” of the “Other World” and outsmart the Beldam. This is a hyper-abridged summary, and I highly recommend you watch the film to get the whole story.
Gaiman wrote the original novella as a bedtime story for his young daughter, who had a little door in her bedroom wall. Personally, I don’t think I would be able to sleep after hearing the story of a little door like one in my own room, behind which lives a witch who wants my soul.
In its early stages of development, the film was going to be a musical with rock group They Might Be Giants signed to compose the soundtrack. But given the dark nature of the film, Selick decided this was not the right tone. The band’s influence made the final cut, however, in the “Other Father Song”, as band member John Linnell provides the Other Father’s singing voice.
What contributes to the terrifying nature of the movie is its deceptive tone (for the audience, like Coraline, is lulled into false security in the “Other World”), haunting score, surreal imagery, twisted messages, and dark connotations. The jump scares still made me flinch even on my most recent viewing in preparation for this article. I have seen many horror flicks, so it is quite a feat for a jump scare to get me. The stop-motion medium allowed the creatives to go all out in making a dark fantasy world, and the imagery invokes arachnophobia, aichmophobia and entomophobia, to name a few fears upon which it seizes. Very few family movies boldly put children in peril, and the suspense is genuine. This begs the question: is “Coraline” a kids movie? I would argue it is not, and marketing it as such is a misnomer. Unlike the more innocent scares of known children’s horror like “Goosebumps” or other Laika films, “Coraline” dares to venture into darker subject matter and show more intense imagery not commonly seen. It is a horror film hiding behind a PG rating.
Over the past fifteen years, “Coraline” has become a pop culture phenomenon. The film was parodied in “The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXVIII” segment “Coralisa” and was under review for a potential Lego Ideas set. “Coraline” merchandise can be found in abundance at Spirit Halloween. The film has garnered a cult following and cemented itself as a modern Halloween classic.
Lastly, to those of you who finished the film in one sitting in your youth: I salute you. You’re braver than I was.
