Coraline (2009)
★★★½ — Coraline (2009)
Coraline arrived in 2009 as something of a statement of intent from LAIKA, the Portland-based animation studio that had been quietly building toward a debut feature for years. Based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novella of the same name, the film follows an eleven-year-old girl who discovers a secret door in her new family home, leading to a parallel world that mirrors her own life but with everything polished and attentive in ways her real existence is not. The catch, naturally, is that nothing quite so appealing comes without a price. Gaiman's source material had already earned a devoted readership for its willingness to sit in genuinely unsettling territory while still speaking directly to children, and the film carries that same quality through. The tagline, "Be careful what you wish for", does a tidy job of setting the tone without giving anything away.
The director is Henry Selick, who will be familiar to anyone who has read our look at The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film that established his particular talent for stop-motion work that feels handmade and strange in equal measure. Coraline represents a significant step forward in terms of sheer technical ambition, with LAIKA developing and printing replacement faces for the puppet characters using 3D printing technology at a scale that had not been attempted before in stop-motion production. The result is a film that took years of painstaking work to complete, and that effort registers on screen in every frame. It is the kind of production where the craft alone could sustain a conversation for an hour, which is both its greatest strength and, depending on where you stand, a potential complication when it comes to emotional connection.
The voice cast brings considerable weight to proceedings. Dakota Fanning leads as Coraline, giving the character enough irritability and curiosity to make her feel like a real child rather than a polished archetype. Teri Hatcher takes on the dual role of Coraline's real mother and her eerily perfect Other Mother, and the contrast she draws between the two is one of the film's more quietly impressive achievements. British and Irish viewers will clock Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French immediately, voicing a pair of eccentric retired actresses who share the house (and who are very clearly having a good time with their roles). Keith David rounds out the principal cast as the Cat, a character who carries more narrative weight than his screen time might initially suggest. For fans of animation more broadly, it sits in interesting company alongside other ambitious work in the form, including films we have looked at like Josep and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, each approaching the possibilities of the medium from a very different angle.
Look, I get why everyone loves this. It’s beautifully animated, the stop-motion is beyond stunning, the world-building is rich, and there’s a creepy elegance to it all that’s hard to deny. It’s a technical marvel and a visual feast from start to finish. But… it just didn’t land with me the way it did with so many others. The tone felt a little too eerie without quite earning the emotional payoff, and something about the pacing and character design kept me at arm’s length. I admire it more than I love it. That said, my daughter was mesmerized. For her, it was magical, thrilling, and empowering everything a kids' film should be. So while Coraline isn’t my personal jam, I can absolutely see its value, especially for younger viewers. An artistic triumph, just not my cup of tea.
What stays with me, beyond all the technical brilliance, is that moment watching my daughter watch the film. That kind of split response, where you can plainly see something working on someone else even as it leaves you a little cold yourself, is actually quite rare with animation aimed at younger audiences. Most of the time it either lands for everyone or it doesn't. For me, Coraline sits in its own category: a film I respect enormously and would recommend without hesitation to the right viewer, even if I won't be rushing back to it myself. Sometimes a film isn't for you, and that's fine. The measure of it is whether it's for someone, and for my daughter, it clearly was. Not every great film has to be your great film.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2025-07-18
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Coraline (2009) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Henry Selick: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
