Henry Selick’s Coraline arrived in 2009 with a tagline that doubles as a warning: “Be careful what you wish for.” The film follows 11-year-old Coraline Jones, who moves with her parents, Charlie and Mel, from Pontiac, Michigan, into the Pink Palace Apartments, an old Victorian house in Ashland, Oregon. Bored and ignored, she finds a small door in the living room. Behind it is not brick but a tunnel, and at the end of that tunnel is a version of her life with better food and more attention.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures At Home.
The Door in the Living Room
The Other World gives Coraline button-eyed doppelgängers of her parents, who lavish her with meals and focus. The catch arrives with the offer to stay forever, which requires buttons sewn onto her eyes. When she refuses and tries to leave, the Other Mother imprisons her in a dark room behind a mirror. Three ghost children appear there, one of whom Coraline recognizes as Wybie’s great-aunt.
Selick wrote, directed and co-produced the film, working from Neil Gaiman’s 2002 novella. The two met as Gaiman finished the book; Gaiman was a fan of Selick’s stop-motion work and invited him to adapt it. Selick thought a direct adaptation would produce “maybe a 47-minute movie,” so the story was expanded.
Tadahiro Uesugi’s Color Palette
Looking for a design unlike most animation, Selick found Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and brought him on as concept artist. Uesugi’s biggest influence was color. The real world is muted. The Other World is more colorful. That split does more storytelling work than any line of dialogue, and it holds up.
The animation was produced at a warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon.
The Cat, Wybie, and the Neighbors
The voice cast is deep, and several names carry the film’s strangest scenes:
- Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones
- Teri Hatcher as Mel Jones and the Other Mother
- Keith David as The Cat
- John Hodgman as Charlie Jones and the Other Father
- Robert Bailey Jr. as Wyborne “Wybie” Lovat
- Ian McShane as Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky and Other Bobinsky
- Jennifer Saunders as Miss April Spink and Other Spink
- Dawn French as Miss Miriam Forcible and Other Forcible
The Cat can travel between worlds and speak. Wybie gives Coraline a rag doll that resembles her. Bobinsky runs a mouse circus. Spink and Forcible, retired burlesque actresses, warn Coraline about the Other World before she understands what they mean.
Real World and Other World
| Element | Real World | Other World |
|---|---|---|
| Coraline’s parents | Charlie and Mel, busy with work | Button-eyed doppelgängers |
| Color | Muted | More colorful |
| Wybie | Talks, gives her the doll | Mute doppelgänger |
| Food and attention | Scarce | Lavish |
The table is the film’s whole argument. Every comfort in the Other World is a copy, and every copy costs something.
A 100-Minute Film With No Wasted Rooms
Coraline runs 100 minutes across animation, family, fantasy and horror. That genre list looks like a compromise. It is not. The horror is the point, and Selick never softens it for the family label.
The film premiered at the Portland International Film Festival on February 5, 2009, and opened in the United States the next day through Focus Features. It grossed $126 million on its initial release. Re-releases pushed the total to $188 million, making Coraline the third-highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.
What the Ghost Children Cost
The ghost children are the part worth watching. They are not decoration. They are the record of what the Other Mother does to children who accept the offer, and the film treats them with a seriousness most animated features avoid.
The Other Mother is the best villain in Selick’s filmography because she is patient. She does not threaten. She offers. Teri Hatcher plays both Mel and the Other Mother, and the gap between the two performances is the film’s engine. The real mother is tired and distracted. The Other Mother is attentive and false. Coraline has to learn the difference between being wanted and being fed.
Why the Reputation Holds
Coraline is not a gentle film, and it should not be. Its reputation has grown past its initial $126 million because the design and the horror hold up better than most 2009 animation. The muted palette versus the colorful one is still the sharpest visual idea in any stop-motion feature of its era. The third-highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time earned that place twice over.
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