Spirited Away (2001)
★★★★½ — Spirited Away (2001)
Some films you watch. Some films you experience. And then there's Spirited Away, which does something else entirely: it pulls you through the screen and into a world so fully realised, so alive with invention and feeling, that calling it a film almost feels like an understatement. This is moving artwork. Full stop.
Hayao Miyazaki has always had an extraordinary gift for world-building, and I've loved plenty of his films, from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to Kiki's Delivery Service. But Spirited Away feels like the moment everything clicked into place at once. The imagination on display here is simply staggering. Every frame is dense with detail, every corner of this spirit world has its own logic and its own weirdness, and yet none of it ever feels arbitrary. It all belongs. You believe in this place completely, even as it defies any rational explanation.
The hand-drawn animation is flawless. I don't use that word lightly. There's a warmth and a weight to it that modern animation, for all its technical wizardry, rarely matches. Characters move with personality, not just motion. Backgrounds breathe. And Joe Hisaishi's score sits beneath all of it like a quiet heartbeat, swelling and retreating at exactly the right moments. It's one of the great film scores, and I'll stand by that.
At its heart, this is a story about a young girl thrown into an overwhelming, frightening world and having to find her footing in it. Change, courage, growing up. It sounds simple when you say it like that, but Miyazaki never reduces it to a lesson. He trusts the story to do the work, and he trusts his audience, including the young ones, to feel it rather than have it explained to them. There's genuine eeriness here alongside the wonder. This isn't a sanitised fantasy. It earns its magic by making you feel the danger too.
I watched it with my daughter, and years later, she still remembers it. Still talks about it. That's not a small thing. A lot of films aimed at children are forgotten almost as soon as the credits roll. The ones that stick do so because they treat childhood imagination with real respect, because they offer something that grows with you rather than something you outgrow. Spirited Away is absolutely one of those films.
Is it the best Studio Ghibli film ever made? I go back and forth on that. My Neighbor Totoro just edges it out for me personally, if I'm being honest, because that film hits something so specific and tender about childhood that I find it almost impossible to argue against. But it's close. It's very close. And the fact that we're still having this conversation twenty-four years on says everything you need to know.
Whether it's the best animated film ever made is a bigger question, and I'm not sure I need to answer it definitively. What I know is that it belongs in that conversation without apology, and that not many films can say the same.
Four and a half stars. Don't miss it. And if you've seen it before, watch it again.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Year: 2001 | Watched: 2007-02-14
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Hayao Miyazaki: Castle in the Sky (1986) · Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) · My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
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)
