Coraline - Written and directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach), based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.

“Be careful what you wish for!” is the warning on the promotional posters. A spooky stop-animation fantasy, Coraline is about unrealistic expectations, dysfunctional families, adventure and gothic overtones.

Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) has just moved into the Pink Palace Apartments with her parents. They are consumed by the garden catalogue they are doing their best to complete before a deadline, even though Coraline’s mother hates dirt and neither of them seem terribly interested in actually doing any gardening. Coraline is easily bored by her new surroundings, though her neighbours are interesting enough in themselves, until one day she discovers a small walled-up doorway in one of the rooms.

That’s when the dreams start. At first, they are too good to be true! Coraline discovers that the doorway is not always walled-up, and curiously follows mice through the doorway, though a mysterious tunnel until— she emerges in the same room that she left! However, she and the audience quickly realise that she is not in exactly the same room. The painting on the wall, previously featuring a wibbling boy who’s ice-cream fell off his cone now features a joyous boy gladly enjoying his ice-cream. The decorations are different. The house is unpacked. There is light, and colour and excitement! She even has an Other Mother who is nice and attentive to her; unlike the one she left at home, and cooks good food for Coraline. Her Other Father sings to her and plants her a garden in the shape of her face! Her neighbours are even present in this other world and are much more interesting and exciting than those she left behind.

Unfortunately, things do not stay so cheery for long and Coraline discovers a dark secret of the Other World that makes her determined to leave for once and for all. If she can.

Coraline is like a retelling of Hansel and Gretel - featuring an unhealthy relationship between the parents and the child, giving justifiable reason for why the main character wishes so adamantly to escape her world. However, unlike Hansel and Gretel, Coraline’s parents are good people, though neglectful, who don’t really want Coraline to go away (though they frequently ask her irritably to leave them alone to work) and neither Hansel nor Gretel ever wished to be abandoned in the woods.

Characters in this movie are quirky and for the most part, captivating. However, the elderly are portrayed as either dotty or paranoid, bordering on insane. The parents are neglectful and Coraline’s only possible friend, Wybie, is disregarded because he is “weird”. This portrayal improves towards the end of the movie when Wybie quickly comes to assist Coraline in defeating her enemy, even risking his own life in the cause – implying to the audience that Coraline herself has changed her perspective on her neighbour.

I would certainly not recommend this film for children. The gothic overtones, fantastical horror and the concept of being trapped in another world, unable to return home are not themes I would willingly expose to those under the age of 15.

Furthermore, from a Christian worldview, Coraline includes occult practices – tea leaf reading (though the leaves cannot be read correctly and those trying to read them argue, implying almost a mockery of the practice) and the use of a divining stick – though Coraline is interrupted. There also appears to be a “spying doll” that eerily reminded me of voodoo dolls, used by the Witch to gather information about Coraline’s life and surroundings so she could create illusions of a perfect world to entice her to stay.

The message of Coraline was not clear to me at first when I left the cinema, nor when I mulled over it the following day. Though it is an interesting story that is imaginatively told, I cannot say with any certainty that the adage, “be careful what you wish for” was well explored with appropriate depth and clarity. Had the parents in Coraline been more compassionately drawn, perhaps the moral would have been more accessibly represented. 

Reviewed by Nicole Reddy.