ParaNorman (2012)

There's a moment watching ParaNorman where you realise you're waiting for it to surprise you, and it never quite does. Not in any meaningful way. You can feel the film reaching for something genuinely strange and affecting, and then pulling back at the last second, smoothing out the edges, making sure nobody's too uncomfortable. That's the central frustration of it: Laika Studios clearly have the craft to do something special, and here they've used it to make something perfectly fine.

The premise has plenty of potential. A misunderstood kid who can see and talk to the dead has to step up and save his town from zombies and a witch's curse. On paper, that's the kind of gleefully weird setup that should produce something with real bite. The stop-motion work is tactile and gorgeous in places, with a texture to the sets and characters that CG animation rarely matches. There's genuine wit scattered through the supporting cast, and the whole thing is draped in Halloween atmosphere that I found easy enough to sit with. I can see why families with young kids might enjoy an October night in with this.

But craft without conviction only gets you so far. ParaNorman clearly wants to park itself in the same territory as Coraline, with its eerie edge and emotional depth, while also being broadly accessible enough for the widest possible audience. Trying to do both, it ends up fully achieving neither. The characters are archetypes that never quite become people. The bullied outsider, the dim jock, the vain older sister, they're all recognisable enough, but the film doesn't do nearly enough work to make you care about them beyond their function in the plot.

The pacing is where it really loses me. There are stretches in the middle that feel like the film is marking time, padding towards a feature-length runtime rather than building genuine momentum. And then the third act arrives with a tonal pivot into heavy-handed moralising that the rest of the film hasn't earned. The message about tolerance and the cruelty of ostracism is a worthy one, and I'm not opposed to family films taking a swing at something meaningful. Wonder (2017) handles similar territory with far more emotional honesty. Here it lands with a thud because the film hasn't laid the groundwork carefully enough. You feel the lesson being delivered at you rather than arriving naturally from the story.

The humour is uneven, too. When it lands, it's sharp, and a couple of the gags made me genuinely laugh. But those moments are surrounded by a lot of material that just sits there, aiming squarely at the younger end of the audience and not even slightly at anyone older. Compare that to the best Laika work, or even something as chaotic as Trolls, which at least commits completely to its own daft energy. ParaNorman hedges its bets at almost every turn.

I don't want to be too harsh on it. It's not a bad film. There's nothing offensive here, nothing lazy about the animation, and I can imagine it working perfectly well as a half-term distraction for kids who are maybe a bit too young for something genuinely scary but want to feel like they're watching something spooky. For that audience, it does what it needs to do.

But if you're an adult, or someone who actually loves animation as a form, you're likely to find yourself a bit restless. The 92 minutes pass without pain and without leaving much trace. It's the kind of film you put on, quite enjoy in the moment, and then struggle to recall specific details of a week later. That's not a disaster, but for a studio with the evident talent and ambition of Laika, it feels like a missed opportunity. ParaNorman settles for being serviceable when the bones of it could have been genuinely memorable.

Two and a half stars.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2012  | Watched: 2026-04-08

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