Review: 'Wolfwalkers' is a luminous telling of Irish folklore, with beautiful images and a touching story

Irish filmmaker Tomm Moore shows with his latest folk tale, “Wolfwalkers,” that he and his Cartoon Saloon studio are the most consistently wonderful animation brand since Pixar.

Moore’s first two features — “The Secret of Kells” (2009) and “The Song of the Sea” (2014), both Oscar nominees — combined precisely rendered animation and Irish folk legends. “Wolfwalkers” builds on the magic of those films, and with them creates a beautiful trilogy.

It’s 1650 in Kilkenny, Ireland, and Bill Goodfellow (voiced by Sean Bean) is charged by the Lord Protector (voiced by Simon McBurney), the governor of the colonizing British forces, with hunting down the wolves that live in the woods outside the walled village. Bill also cares for his daughter, Robin (voiced by Honor Kneafsey), a headstrong girl who wants to hunt at her dad’s side.

Robin sneaks out of the village and goes into the woods, where she meets Mebh Óg MacTíre (voiced by Eva Whittaker), a wild girl who communes with the wolfpack. Mebh is a Wolfwalker, and when she sleeps, the wolf spirit in her roams free. Robin can’t convince her father that the Wolfwalkers are more than Irish superstition — even when, because of an errant bite on the arm from Mebh, Robin becomes a Wolfwalker, too.

Moore and co-director Ross Stewart — who, with Jerrica Cleland, created the story that forms the backbone of Will Collins’ screenplay — create a deeply detailed visual palette. The woods are painted in lush greens and autumn reds, a verdant playground for Mebh and Robin. The town is presented as flat and gray, like something out of a 17th-century tapestry. The contrast is striking, and also serves to illustrate the divide between the regimented control of the English invaders and the natural wildness of Irish folk wisdom.

The animation is both detailed and varied, and one of the most stunning images is when Robin discovers that, as a wolf, she can see smells that guide her through the forest. And though there may be some computer-driven augmentation, Moore and his artists use the look of old-school hand-drawn animation to give “Wolfwalkers” a roughhewn humanity that takes one’s breath away.

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‘Wolfwalkers’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 13, in theaters where open; available for streaming on AppleTV+ starting Dec. 11. Rated PG for sequences of violence and peril, scary images, some thematic elements and brief language. Running time: 102 minutes.