Review: CORALINE was joyfully nightmarish

by Joey Paur



We have been looking forward to watching ‘Coraline' for some time now, and today I finally got a chance to see it. You really can't go wrong putting a team together that consists of writer Neil Gaiman and master stop motion animation director Henry Selick. Gaiman is a fantastic storyteller with quite an amazing imagination, and Henry Selick did such a wonderfully brilliant job bringing the story of ‘Coraline' to life! The story could not have been told on screen any better than what I saw in the movie theater today.



‘Coraline' is a movie that was built specifically to be watched in 3D, so when you do go out to see this movie make sure you catch it in 3D because it brings the world of Coraline to life in the most wonderful way. It is such a dark and magical journey filled with unique characters and settings.



The movie is about a young girl by the name of Coraline whose family movies into a new home to finish writing a gardening catalog. While Coraline's mother and father are buried deep in their work she begins to explore the new area she is in. While exploring she find a secret door, which she crawls through to find a parallel reality to her regular life. Everything is inharmoniously similar to her actual life - except it seems much better! Her new button eyed parents are much more fun to be around and it seems like they care more about her. However, the more time she spends in this alternate universe the more she begins to see that there is something more sinister going on, and that her counterfeit parents are the face of something darker, when she finally figures it all out it is too late and her new mother traps her so that she can keep Coraline forever, and make her a permanent part of this dark world by replacing her real eyes with button ones. To escape and save her real friends and family Coraline digs deep within herself to find the determination and bravery to escape the from this alternate reality and stop the evil mother from getting her way.



I love films like this! The kind where the story and characters just wrap me in the creators world. Which is one of the reasons why 3D is such and important tool for a movie like this. You know they did a great job making this movie when you get so caught up in what is happening on screen that all the kids in the theater and the noise they make just cancel out.



The movie is kind of dark, and it may be scary and intense for some kids, depending on what their tolerance level is for scary type kids movies, like ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas' or ‘Monster House' if they could get through those ok then they should be fine.

Coraline is a film I highly recommend. It is incredibly enjoyable and strange. The best way to describe it is like a really cool nightmare!

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