‘Wildwood’ Review: Was Laika’s 16-Year Journey Worth the Wait?
© Blackbear & Laika
Wildwood is obsessed with impressing you instead of immersing you. Its marketing has emphasised the 16 year journey to make the film, the meticulously crafted puppets, sets and outfits and the idea that Laika had to become worthy of making it. All of this serves to put you in the cinema in a position to fawn over Wildwood’s technical brilliance, while paying no mind to the film’s underwhelmingly hollow story. A film should earn your investment in its world and characters, Wildwood takes it for granted.
Like many modern fantasy stories, Wildwood sees a pair of unassuming kids thrust into a world beyond their comprehension. Prue and her classmate Kurtis are forced to uncover the secrets of Portland’s forests after the former’s baby brother is kidnapped by a murder of crows. The film opens with such a dark and sincere tone and when the kidnapping happens, you’d expect it to be treated as a heavy, traumatic event. Instead, we burst into a jaunty, slapstick opening credits sequence and the film leaves behind any of the emotional heft it hinted at being interested in.
Once we arrive in the magical forest, we’re introduced to myriad factions and provinces. There’s the bureaucratic government officials whose role is ambiguous and there’s the Avian Principality, a mini society consisting only of birds. But the most consequential factions are Queen Alexandra, a fascist warlord wreaking havoc on the forest, and the freedom fighting bandits who want to take her down.
A story about revolt against a dictator could have been a timely comment on our current political landscape if Wildwood was committed to getting into the weeds of their strife. We’ve seen such conflicts on the big screen dating back to Star Wars, and so Wildwood asks us to get the gist of the ideological battle rather than fleshing it out. Alas, that might distract us from how pretty the puppets are.
© Blackbear & Laika
Wildwood wants us to have the feeling of seeing a storybook unfold in front of us, but presents us a sanded-down, generic fantasy realm that is without any of the quirks a place that actually might exist would possess. The character of Prue is an outsider to this world too, we should be seeing its bizarreness through her eyes, but that wonder and whimsey is far too manufactured to be effective.
A director’s ‘perspective’ is a difficult thing to define, but it’s glaringly obvious whenever a film doesn’t have one. Let’s take Spirited Away as an example, a film that’s clearly a massive influence on Wildwood. When Chihiro is thrust into a fantasy world, her fear and sense of hopelessness is palpable because of Miyazaki’s intensely specific perspective. The design of the spiritual realm in that film is something only he could concoct. Does Travis Knight have the same conviction to craft something unique, not just through his puppets, but on the page?
Wildwood’s worldbuilding and story is disappointingly risk-free, not breaking anywhere near enough eggs to make its omelette. Thankfully, the same thing cannot be said for the visual side of the film.
© Blackbear & Laika
If Wildwood’s aim is to be a piece of eye candy for the audience to fawn over, then it hits that target with aplomb. Laika’s set design and costuming has been pristine since their inception and there is no change here. Where their biggest evolution comes is in the animation performance. Characters have such elastic expressions and smooth mouth movements, it’s so seamless and expressive that you forget you’re not watching CGI.
Another wonderful visual perk of Wildwood is its lighting. Every scene is either bathed in a gorgeous golden light, or wonderfully moody blue-black nighttime aura. Both settings help to bring out the very best in the myriad environments we trot through in Wildwood, all of which are designed beautifully.
The standout set piece in the film is a massive blowout final battle which is the technical pinnacle of Laika’s entire project. The way the camera moves, the number of moving characters on screen, the complexity of their movement and the clarity with which the action is presented are all astounding. Again, you’re watching it thinking about how impressive it is rather than the stakes of the battle, but it’s a thrilling sequence nonetheless.
It feels greedy to ask for more after watching Wildwood. The craft on display is a testament to some of the most dedicated and talented below the line staff in the world. However, it’s because of all of the effort they put in that the script and story feel so hollow. If anything, the animation team have been let down by a story that is a rote regurgitation of fantasy epics past that asks us to be satisfied with an approximation of whimsey rather than putting in the effort to sincerely whisk us away. Wildwood is hollow, but at least the puppets are pretty.