By Matthew Moorcroft

Highest Recommendation

• Directed by Travis Knight
• Starring Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Mahershala Ali
• PG-13

It’s impossible to not be jaw-dropped by Wildwood. Arguably one of the most ambitious animated films ever produced in the West, it’s basically as soon as the first scene that you quickly realize you are watching something uniformly generational with it. The large scale sets are nothing like you’ve ever seen in the medium, the sheer attention to detail in both the props and the characters feel almost wizard-like, and the movements so precise that you no longer see the seams of the stop motion jitteriness that other films of it’s ilk can have. And yet, you always know it’s real. That somebody did this by hand. It’s real, tangible, and you can just reach out and touch it.

The latest film in a long recent line of films that somewhat feel like “the last movie”, Wildwood in some ways might be the “the last animated movie” simply due to that scale and ambition. But it’s also a glorious return for Laika, who have been quiet for quite some time to make what could be their final chance at this kind of film before everything comes crashing down in a pit of soulless AI sludge. It’s a movie where the craft matters arguably more then the story being told here, a flick whose presentation and the fact that it exists is the sole reason behind it’s existence, and sometimes that’s more then enough.

That presentation does wonders for it as well, as Wildwood‘s purposefully simple story about a girl searching for her lost brother is something that is more a fable then anything else. Indebted to the dark fantastical tales of the Brothers Grimm with a hint of high fantasy worldbuilding and 1800s Civil War aesthetics which is certainly a unique approach to fantasy that we don’t see often, Wildwood will likely scare younger viewers with it’s surprisingly intense violence and imagery, but older kids and adults will find a lot to chew on here in regards to how that imagery is actually handled. It’s with a surprising amount of care and nuance for a film of it’s ilk, and it’s blunt simplicity means that the loss of innocence hits like a ton of bricks almost out of nowhere quite like the onset of puberty.

But if presentation is the name of the game, there really isn’t anything else quite like this. Even before it’s third act becomes one of the most impressive battle sequences this way of Helm’s Deep, so much is focused on how things move and fly around that you can’t help but notice it; the papers floating in the wind, the bloody knuckles on Prue as she is riding her bike, the murder of crows where all of them are individually animated on top of one another. It’s all lovingly crafted to a beautiful precision, with even the small leaves on the trees being these tactile creations you just want to pluck out of thin air.

It’s important to spend as much time talking about the craft behind Wildwood as it is simply because it’s very likely we will never see something quite like it ever again in this space, especially one with a voice cast as stacked as this one – you know the cast is talented when Mahershala Ali isn’t even in the three best performances of the flick – and a true sense of darkness that most animated films now tend to avoid. Much has been said about the PG-13 rating that Wildwood got hit with and it’s very much earned here, even down to it’s themes which are decidedly aimed at an audience who is going through their own loss of innocence themselves.

But most of all, Wildwood just feels magical. It’s an instant classic in the making even outside of it’s obvious technical mastery, and walking out of it feels like leaving the wardrobe from Narnia back into the real world: you just want to go back somehow, someway, even if you can’t. I’m glad that it exists as a piece of artistic triumph, but most of all I’m glad it exists as an example of the power of human ingenuity and fantasy. One of the best of the year.