A story about a weird kid with a weird talent who is neglected by everyone and is the only one who can save the world from an evil curse sounds redundant on paper. However, when you get a talented group of people to not only succeed in telling this kind of story but also succeed at making it feel fresh and new again is a sign that we as moviegoers are in good hands. The brilliant stop motion filmmakers at Lakia have already succeeded with bringing out the horrific but clever movie Coraline, and ParaNorman looks to do the same thing as well. All I can say is, by gosh did they ever deliver.
Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is your usual 11-year-old kid with a strange gift of being able to talk to dead creatures such as ghosts. Sadly, Despite his friend Neil (Tucker Albrizzi) always having his back, Norman is often found neglected by everyone in school as well as his own family. Everything changes when Uncle Prenderghast (John Goodman) comes in his ghost form to warn him about the witch’s curse and how to stop it. Norman attempts to stop the curse by reading a story, but complications get in the way and the zombies start to rise from their graves. Pretty soon other characters get roped into the mix including Norman’s sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) Neil and his brother Mitch (Casey Affleck) and the school bully named Alvin (Christopher Mintz Plasse) who all have to figure out how to put an end to the witch’s curse. However, there may be more story to the witch and the zombies than Norman and the gang initially realized.
The story, in summary, sounds like something that could have ended up being cruel and mean-spirited but the great thing is that the focus is where it should be and it doesn't waste its time on the things that could have been hard to sit through. Instead, it focuses most of its attention on the witch's curse and how Norman has to stop it. It’s almost like an homage to many old horror movies as well as classic 80’s adventures. The climax in particular is one of the best if not the best climaxes in any stop motion movie ever created. Without giving too much away, the way the movie handles the entirety of the climax is without a doubt outstanding as you are guaranteed to feel many emotions such as fear, sadness, and excitement that all end with a great moral that is thought-provoking and challenging.
The Characters are given likable personalities and they do a great job at being relatable and humanly realistic (Almost like something you’d see in a Brad Bird film). Norman being the protagonist is super sympathetic not only in his personality but also in how we understand his feelings toward his world point of view and the people he’s bouncing his feelings off of. Neil is the typical best friend character but they do give him some interesting material to work with and I like that even when Norman is at his lowest point he still wants to stand beside him. Courtney could have easily been an annoying teenage girl stereotype but thanks to Anna Kendrick's charm, she really was one of the most enjoyable characters in the movie. The only character that didn’t really work for me was Prenderghast played by John Goodman as I barely got to know him and he seemed very rushed in the first act.
The Animation is always something I can look forward to seeing in any Laika production and boy did they deliver. The backgrounds at first start out sunny and whimsical with a little bit of misery to capture Norman’s feelings. When the witch’s curse comes into play the colors suddenly shift to those neon greens dark purples and blacks which remind me of traditional Halloween colors. The design of the background people is a little ugly at points but not in a way that would make you not want to look at them. Sometimes the ugliness can work great when it comes to the design of the zombies who are designed so brilliantly. The CGI effects are admittedly noticeable, but I never cared cause it felt like they really did belong in whichever sequence was happening. Speaking of great sequences, the already mentioned final scene is not only great narrative-wise but also great visual-wise as everything in that moment is masterful and it just keeps getting more and more insane until the final resolution.
The Music much like the movie is an homage to many classic movies and it combines itself with its own orchestral style to fit the mood that the film tries to go for. Composer Jon Brion did an overall stupendous job of making something old feel new again.
This movie not only received acclaim from audiences and critics alike, but it would also go on to be nominated for best-animated feature at the Oscars. Even though it, unfortunately, didn’t win, ParaNorman proves to be another success for Laika as this film does everything that made Coraline a success while also telling a new story that seems old and rundown on paper but succeeds immensely in its execution. Plus, the addition of great stop motion and CGI visual effects help to elevate the kind of family-friendly horror storytelling that Laika is superb at. There is no doubt that Laika has done it again. I might not love this movie as much as Coraline, but it still comes pretty dang close overall.
(Final Grade: A-)