The Halloween viewings continue and today it was my partners day to pick a movie, She chose 2009’s ‘Coreline’. A film i’d been aware of for a number of years, but just hadnt really gotten around to. The plot involves our titular ‘Coreline’ and her family as they move from Michigan to a backwater boarding house complex. Corelines feeling a bit down as things seem to be going increasingly from bad to worse. Shes had to leave all of her friends behind, her new home is shambolic and falling apart, the neighbours range from eccentric to border creepy, and her parents are increasingly becoming distant and short with her. Her only outlet in all of this is the one local kid to her ‘Wybie’ whos labelled a stalker almost immediately, and a stray cat.
Things are looking pretty boring and grey for Coreline, that is until she finds a small door in the living room of her new home thats locked. and one night, while drifting off to sleep, she’s led to the door by some strange mice who reveal a portal to another world, a colourful, fun and vibrant land featuring mirror opposites of her current friends, family and situations. Her ‘Other’ parents are loving, caring, fun and listen to her, her one stalker friend has been silenced and everyone else wants nothing more than to spend eternity with Coreline.
As the real world becomes increasingly hostile and unpleasent, she finds herself retreating to this surreal ‘other’ world more frequently, until eventually, her ‘other’ parents ask her if she’d like to stay forever. Coreline seriously considers it, until she finds out the cost of staying there forever. The loss of her eyes, to be replaced with buttons. And on refusing that. her ‘other’ parents real motives slowly begin to become apparent. As Coreline must fight to save herself, her family and learn the true meaning of love.
And what we have here, in my opinion is a very technically impressive film, with an intricate and layered plot dealing with themes of toxic relationships, neglect and ‘coming of age’…But at the same time, one that I wasnt entirely won over by.
To me? the film reminded me a bit of ‘Paperhouse’, both films deal with similar themes, tones, In many ways the plot is eerily similar. and I think that was the biggest thing that threw me about this film, is it all felt very much like something i’d seen before. That coupled with some slightly slower than hoped for pacing issues here and there and an overeliance on visual spectical, left me at times feeling a bit hollow towards the film. I dont think anything it really tries to do is bad inherently, it just all feels a little bit superficial to me at times…
The script itself is quite well written, the dialogue is nice and naturalistic, theres a great level of dark humour tonally underpinning this film that contrasts with some genuinely bleak and unsettling horror imagery, that made me pause for thought, especially given this was supposed to be a kids movie…and older kids movie I grant you…but a kids movie non the less. The horror, combined with the slightly more mature subtext themes creates an unsettling vibe to the whole film, a sort of ‘forced smile’ of a movie if you will.
The act structuring is a little wonky in my opinion, the first act is kind of slowburn, which is understandble as you need the time to warm up your audience to the surreal worldbuilding thats taking place. But at the same time, once its finished with the world building, the second act kind of just…gives way to not a whole lot, we meander in the middle slowly being breadcrumbed ideas, concepts and plot elements for the 3rd act. Which is *technically* the right thing to do, but it doesnt really DO much of anything in that 2nd act other than drop these hints every 4-5 minutes or so, with big gulfs of Coreline just wandering around woodland areas and the boarding house, reiterating older plot points.
This became problematic for me, to the point that, by the start of the 3rd act, it almost felt like I was watching a ‘Lets play’ of a point and click adventure game from the late 90s. It really feels in places like im watching video game footage for how simplistic they planned out the plotting of the act structuring. And that vibe carries into the 3rd act, but at least, mercifully brings with it a bit of action, some meat on the bone, and a finale that felt earned and winds the production down in a meaningful, if not slightly underwhelming way.
As for the art direction and cine? its explosively creative, relishing the opportunity to push the stop motion animation to the limits of the time. Brimming with creative ideas, its colourful, bright and jam packed with constantly moving backgrounds and multiple layers of depth of movement. I would argue this is beyond impressive for 2009, and it is. But for me? it almost works against the film at times, by ramming SO MUCH stuff into the frame thats colourful or movie, it creates a bit of an issue in trying to focus on what im ACTUALLY supposed to be looking at. A good example being in the opening of the film when Coreline is walking in the woods, they have a tracking shot where they frame her through a hole in the trees walking down a dirt road, but the leaves on the trees are blowing around and theres movement in the background too, meaning it took me a good couple of seconds to adjust my eyes to actually FIND Coreline in the image.
Throw in some (im assuming) unintentional frame rate judder on some of the more complex animation pieces, and again, I cannot stress enough just how over the top and incredible the animation work is here. But subtlety isnt this films strongest point, and I found some of their offerings more distracting than beneficial.
That being said, when the shots arnt overcrowded, compositional choices are delightful, the sequence building is rock solid. and the creative touches in the sequence building, and in particular how the production handles transitions was pretty incredible. I was quite the fan!
Performance wise, again its pretty faultless. I think for my money the best performers here have to be Teri Hatcher and John Hodgeman as Coralines parents. they really get a lot of duel role work here and Hatcher in particular gives a frankly terrifying performance in places REALLY bringing the sinsiter elements of the production to life. I thought she was fantastic. I also have to give some credit to French and Saunders as ‘Spink and Forcible’ two elderly thesbians with an eccentric streak. They’re essentially playing to their strength as a former double act here, but its nice to see them performing back together as, by this time, apart from very rare appearences, the two hadnt performed together in years.
Dakota Fanning as Coraline herself is just kind of…flat to me. I dont think its a bad turn, but I just feel like it comes across as a bit generic…which as a supporting cast member would have been fine. But given shes the MAIN character, kind of left me sighing a bit as we slowly tumbled through this movie with her. She emotes fine enough, she gets the lines out. I just wish thered been a bit of ‘oompf’ in the performance, because as it stands, she made Coraline just sound a bit cringey at times.
All of this however, is tied together by a wonderful score, with probably the highlights being a song or two penned by ‘THey Might be Giants’ which was always going to win me over ultimately.
I guess…as the credits rolled on this one, my train of thought was ‘well, that was kind of visually impressive, im glad i’ve seen it, I probably dont need to see this one again for a while.’ Its definitely a fine enough movie, and I can easily see why its a favourite of 2000’s alternative kids and a darling to the critics. But to me? while I was impressed visually, I wish it had just been a bit shorter and tighter. Definitely worth checking out in spite of its flaws. I think its one that, if your in the right mindset, it could become a new firm favourite.
TYTD Reviews 