Why does stop-motion animation work so well as a medium for the macabre, from The Nightmare Before Christmas to Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride to Coraline?
I think it’s partly because stop-motion trades on the creepiness potential of dolls. Dolls don’t have to be creepy, but they plunge us into the precritical world of childhood, reaching past the defenses of adult rationality, which opens the door to creepiness like nothing else.
There’s something dreamlike about dolls moving by themselves, a technique that evokes the earliest days of cinema; it seems to belong to another world, much like silent film. That’s why the Vatican film list honoree Nosferatu — a silent-era vampire movie with some stop-motion effects — remains creepier than any vampire talkie. A computer-animated Halloween tale like Monster House, however well-made, is inseparable from the modern milieu of graphics cards and processors that produced it — and while the computer age can be scary, it isn’t macabre.
A doll has no life outside the life we give it. Actors in a live-action film are bigger than their roles; however scared you are for Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, you can tell yourself she took breaks between shots and went on to make scads of other films. A doll isn’t playing a character; it is the character. That’s partly why The Miracle Maker is the most persuasive of Jesus films: Like an icon or a crucifix, the figurine that represents Jesus is Jesus in a way no actor could be.
It’s also why Norman, with his bristle-brush hair standing on end, embodies his horror-movie milieu even more absolutely than Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. Like Osment’s character, Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) sees dead people — and he finds them considerably easier to relate to than the living. Misunderstood at home by his family and at school by bullies and teachers, Norman takes solace in the companionship of the affable ghosts haunting his small New England town.
The dead are one thing; they undead are something else, perhaps. Norman suffers from frightening visions of a dark incident in his town’s colonial past — a Salem-style witch trial that could come back to more than haunt the town. Alarmingly, the town kook, Mr. Prenderghast (John Goodman, whose familiar avuncular tones are among the film’s missteps), who also happens to be Norman’s uncle, seems to know all about Norman’s visions — and he intimates that the boy’s gift may be all that stands between the town and an invasion of zombies.
ParaNorman is the sophomore film from Laika, the creators of Coraline. As with Coraline, there’s a lovingly hand-crafted quality to the character and production design, albeit augmented by cutting-edge technology. (Literally cutting-edge: The interchangeable hands and features and so forth used to create the illusion of expressive movement and gesture were sculpted by 3-D printers from computer models.) It’s not as daringly, disturbingly original as Coraline, but the dialogue and visuals are peppered with wit, and benefit from a palpable affection for its genre roots, especially the cheesy, low-budget horror films of the 1970s parodied in the opening sequence.
On the down side, most of the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes drawn without much affection (though all are more or less redeemed): Norman’s shrill cheerleader sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick); dumb-jock Mitch (Casey Affleck), the older brother of Norman’s one friend, nerdy, overweight Neil (Tucker Albrizzi); goth bully Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), an older version of Moe from “Calvin & Hobbes.”
Norman’s father (Jeff Garlin, the voice of the Captain from Wall-E) embodies the most hackneyed of animated-film tropes: the blustering patriarch who doesn’t understand his offspring and insists that he conform to social norms. Norman’s more understanding mother (Leslie Mann) does put a sympathetic spin on the father’s behavior—she implies that his rigid attitude is only because he wants Norman to be happy, and he’s afraid society will reject him for his oddities—though this is a nuance that seldom inflects the father’s own behavior.
Somehow, for better and for worse, that notion of people being unkind out of fear becomes the movie’s defining theme. This becomes poignant when extended to the one group of characters least likely to elicit empathy in a movie like this: the Puritan judges at the witch trial in the film’s back story, whose actions are seen as genuinely wrong, yet who are depicted as doing what they thought was right, but acting out of fear and ignorance.
The theme becomes problematic, though, when the movie tries to follow it all the way through, to dissolve all apparent evil and malice into misunderstanding, anger and fear. This approach can work in some stories, but evil is too potent and too palpable to eradicate entirely from the realms of fantasy and imagination. Corpse Bride achieved mixed success with its depiction of a ghoulish afterlife devoid of true horror, with at least some openness to transcendence. On the other hand, How to Train Your Dragon succeeded in its sympathetic reinterpretation of its seemingly ferocious dragons in part by retaining one truly malevolent mega-dragon at the bottom of the draconian hierarchy who was ultimately responsible for the depredations of the rest.
ParaNorman tries to go the Corpse Bride route to an extent, but mixes in images of such iconic, manifest malificence that its stab at an empathic twist falls flat. If it’s not quite sympathy for the devil, it’s something not too far removed from it. For a corrective counter-example, see Monster House. In both films, evil begins with cruelty and mistreatment, leading to tragedy and thereby to implacable, vengeful wrath. But Monster House recognizes that evil has lasting consequences; that at some point vengeful wrath metastasizes into something that can no longer be reasoned with or appealed to; that sympathy is not the answer to everything. ParaNorman tries to have its cake and eat it too. It doesn’t work.
The cherry on this postmodern moral cake is a throwaway punchline at the very end explicitly establishing that muscle-bound oaf Mitch — who’s gone the entire movie oblivious to Courtney’s obvious fawning in a way that no straight guy, however dense, could possibly be — is homosexual. At no time is Mitch himself mistreated by anyone, either out of fear or for any other reason. Still, in the film’s moral universe, fear and ignorance are the obvious explanations for every kind of failure to embrace and affirm every kind of differentness, including homosexuality.
As this suggests, despite its appealing animated look, ParaNorman is not family fare even for more adventurous kids able to handle the likes of Monster House. (Early in the film, asked what he’s watching on TV, Norman casually says, “Sex and violence.”) Still, older genre fans may enjoy its craft and whimsy in spite of its obvious issues. The overtly objectionable elements are tangential, and for the most part it’s a pretty good-hearted film, with a likable protagonist and some entertaining set pieces. It’s melancholy to say it, but Hollywood product these days is so homogenized that something different is often a breath of fresh air, even if at times it’s better not to inhale.
P.S. Like many such stories, the film’s eschatology — its depiction of the afterlife — is a mixed bag. Norman’s ghostly grandmother refers explicitly to “paradise,” where she says she would be “cavorting” with her late husband if she didn’t have “unfinished business” on earth. The spectral state, then, seems to be a temporary one — possibly a purgatorial one, at least for some spirits. (On the other hand, Granny also has a somewhat dismissive line about paradise having “no cable and no canasta” and “cavorting” not being her style anyway.) We also see a number of souls depart the spectral state, dissolving like the army of the dead in The Return of the King; from Granny’s comments, we can perhaps infer that they depart for paradise.
Steven D. Greydanus is the Register’s film critic.
Content advisory: Pervasive creepy/scary images, including animated gore and gross-out images, usually played for laughs; some rude humor; a few mature references including a fleeting reference to a same-sex romantic relationship. Might be okay for teens and up.
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If this is a Catholic “review” then I would say this is Morally Offensive. ANY reference to any “same-sex relationships” should automatically be tagged Morally Offensive and not “maybe OK for teens”.
Michelle: Really? ANY reference to same-sex relationships whatsoever AUTOMATICALLY makes an entire presentation offensive? So you’d condemn Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, for instance? How about Braveheart, with its depiction of the gay relationship between Prince Edward and his male lover? Or Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, with all Martin Landau’s gay innuendo?
This is one fleeting throwaway line at the end of a movie (a male character mentions a never-seen “boyfriend”). That’s enough to keep my from letting my young kids watch it, but not enough to declare an entire movie morally offensive.
Thanks for including the bit at the end. I was excited to see this in 3D (stop motion animation being the only thing for which 3D really clicks for me), but maybe we’ll wait for the bluray and watch it ourselves before we let the kids see it. I do have a copy of “Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror” on order, though, so at least Family Movie Night can proceed apiece.
From the trailer I had already decided it was inappropriate for my seven year old. My reasoning was that Norman talks to dead people. It was too close to a sayance to me and reminded me of King Saul from OT. I was surprised you didnt mention this? Or, maybe i missed it? I am shocked there is a homosexual character in a childrens movie. Unbelievably inappropriate for children! Thanks for the added ammunition to talk to my husband about this movie. My son still really wants to see it. I think it is safe to say he won’t be now.
Lisa: FWIW, just because it’s animated doesn’t make ParaNorman a “children’s movie.” It’s really aimed at an older audience of tweens and up, although parental discernment in this regard has become so atrocious that parents routinely bring their young children to hard-R films with graphic violence and sexual content. Still, I agree that the “boyfriend” line is an affront, albeit a fleeting one.
I tend to put ghost stories, from Hamlet to The Sixth Sense, in a different category from séances or necromancy. Norman doesn’t summon spirits or engage in any ritual magic; he isn’t trying to divine information from them about the world of the living, etc. He just happens to have a gift for seeing ghosts. OTOH, there is a theme of seeming witchcraft in the film, but the movie is hopelessly muddled about the moral status and consequences of that witchcraft, which is the locus of most of my frustration with the film.
Sorry, but…already somebody is trying to out-Catholic Steven? Yikes. Maybe it’s just my opinion, but I find his reviews remarkably thorough and fair. Although teenagers are still in formation, I thought they were generally considered to have reached the age of reason. Given the typical readership here, isn’t it a tad unkind to assume that all the other parents don’t know how to use sound judgment or teach kids to use right reason, or at least when to let them off their tight leashes and run around a little (intellectually speaking)? If they are that threatened by the mere suggestion that things in the world are different from at home…ai ai ai, they are fragile flowers indeed.
Just to follow the red herring comment a little further, a character’s self-description as homosexual is not a depiction of same-sex relationships, and is in itself not sinful. It may not be a topic for young people, but it’s not morally objectionable and cause for Catholics never to breathe the movie’s name.
On the topic, dolls that move by themselves are unavoidably creepy, even when beautiful, as in Coppelia. And anyone old enough to have seen Talky Tina stalk Telly Savalas on that episode of Twilight Zone will never even pass a toy store without a shiver.
I agree that just because it is animated does not make it a children’s movie. However, this is undoubtedly marketed to children. I was at Disney a week ago and at the one huge store at Downtown Disney that is all they were showing on the large screen tv. Also, my son saw the trailer at a children’s movie.
I enjoyed the movie until the very end when homosexuality was mentioned. If I knew this in advance, I would have not allowed my child to see the movie as sexuality does not belong in a child’s film. I feel cheated and upset that my child was exposed to a serious topic that the film had no right introducing children to. It was a low blow.
I thught that little joke was funny at the end. I took my younger sibligs to see it, but i think the end just went ver there heads, there were still excited from the climax of the movie. So to all the parent who feel that onc instance is enough to not show the movie to their children, did we forget the moment of the young child free framing the older woman in a promiscous position. Or the teen girl,flirting and groping the shirtless male, refrencing sex seems to only be wrong if its the same sex isn’t
I agree with D. I thought the movie (my husband and I went) was amazing until the mention of homosexuality in a film for children. I watched movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas growing up and never had to live in fear of topics like this. Pointless agenda.
I don’t think I want to see this. The trailer frightened me. Plus the characters look really creepy. Our local newspaper’s film critic referred to it as “a Zombie movie for kids.” According to your review, it doesn’t seem okay for kids to watch. I’ll go see “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days” again. It’s not as beautifully done as “Brave” was, but it was SO FUNNY!
i loved the movie. the reference at the end was hilarious.
To everyone who had a problem with the gay reference: I think that this movie handled it beautifully. It wasn’t a stereotypically gay character, and it was just so casually referenced, and not brought up again. I would hardly call that being beaten over the head by an agenda of any kind.
Like it or not, there are gay people in this world, and a lot of them are kids just trying to figure it all out. I don’t care what religion you are, its a fact, and for kids to see that someone else (maybe even a dumb jock) is having the same feelings that they are can only a good thing.
And for those of you that will say that your kids are too young to know about the topic, I would argue that they are also too young for the scary images and themes presented in the movie. I guarantee more kids will lose sleep over the witch than over Mitch’s offscreen boyfriend. Just sayin’.
I agree with Wes.
I have not seen this film yet (I don’t go to theatres much; yeesh! prices! However, I agree that a mention of a character being homosexual, or even indications of a homosexual couple is not inappropriate, in an adults movie. I agree, not for young children, but for the well gounded, i see no issue.
Lisa,
As far as I can tell I don’t think ParaNorman is a Disney film. Are you possibly confusing it with the upcoming film Frankenweenie?
The only reference to sex was a character mentioning his boyfriend. That’s no more sexual than if he were to mention his girlfriend instead.
SPOILERS
So here’s one of the subtle things I got out of the movie - they mentioned how the bad witch-trial conductors were “Puritans,” and although they don’t use the term Christians, that’s who they were referring to, particularly because the story takes place in Massachusetts. In this secular world, it seems that Salem Witch trial lore is all about how ignorant Christians, due to their own superstitious bigotry, thought people were witches. Granted, in Christian history, the killing of false “witches” is not a shining moment, but in this age of Da Vinci Code, Golden Compass, and video games like Assassin’s Creed, the worst of Christian history is not only showcased, but often magnified and exaggerated. In this film, the bad Christian Puritans kill a small little girl who was only “playing.” However, it seems that the little girl’s character had the same gift as Norman, that she communed with the dead. And the real kicker is that she did actually put a curse on the judge and jury! Although the writer’s portray the girl as innocent, her own actions suggest that she did perform some sort of witchcraft on the jury before her death, if not at least some act of putting a spell or curse on them. She is chastised in the film’s climax, not for exercising sorcery, but for acting vengeful and mean - which is what the jury did to her in the first place. So the movie’s whole premise about the ignorance of the judge and jury is in question - the girl did effect a curse, and yet this point goes completely unnoticed or unaddressed in the film’s presentation.
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