Review: 'Wildwood' is a stop-motion epic, creating an epic fantasy world that's massive and intimate at the same time

Through five movies, from “Coraline” to “Missing Link,” animation fans have grown to expect a unique kind of craftsmanship from Laika, the Oregon-based stop-motion studio that produces handcrafted movies in a computer-driven world.

With the studio’s sixth and easily most ambitious movie, “Wildwood,” director Travis Knight (“Kubo and the Two Strings”) and his Laika team have outdone themselves by creating a fantasy on a level of “The Chronicles of Narnia” and using their little plastic-and-fabric figurines to create something both epic and intimate.

Our heroine, Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, formerly of “Andi Mack”), is a 12-year-old girl living in Portland, Oregon, with her baby brother, Mac (voiced by the director’s son Arthur), and their granola-ish parents (voiced by Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson). When the parents assign Prue to babysit Mac, they give one command: Don’t leave the house. Prue, like most kids, disobeys and sticks Mac in a wagon behind her bicycle and heads into town, where she runs into her very nerdy classmate, Curtis (voiced by Jacob Tremblay).

Prue takes Mac to a playground, and is surprised when dozens of crows descend on the jungle gym. (Yes, comparisons to Hitchcock’s “The Birds” are inevitable, and the set-up remains as terrifying as ever.) Suddenly, the crows take Mac airborne, and Prue must pursue them to the bridge at the edge of town, which leads to what has been called “the Impassable Wilderness.” At first, it lives up to its name, but Prue and tagalong Curtis are allowed inside.

What they find is an army of coyotes, dressed in Napoleonic military uniforms. The coyotes serve the Dowager Princess, Alexandra (voiced by Carey Mulligan), who has designs on reshaping the forest to something dark and foreboding, for reasons that will present themselves in due course.

Prue’s journey to find Mac leads her through a bureaucratic rabbit warren, and eventually to The General (voiced by Angela Bassett), a giant hawk who commands the kingdom’s birds (except the crows). Prue also finds Wildwood’s wisest woman, Iphigenia (voiced by Tantoo Cardinal), who helps her understand the magic-fueled circumstances that led to her and Mac’s birth. 

Meanwhile, Curtis is taken down a different path. First drafted into Alexandra’s coyote army, Curtis eventually falls in with her rivals, the Bandits, and their swashbuckling leader, Breandan (voiced by Mahershala Ali). 

The voice cast is extraordinary. Besides the names I’ve already mentioned, there’s Awkwafina, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, Jemaine Clement, Len Cariou, Blythe Danner and Rob Delaney. That’s an impressive roster for any animated movie, and Knight deploys them expertly.

Screenwriter Chris Butler — who directed “Missing Link” and co-directed “ParaNorman” — has expertly adapted “Wildwood” from the children’s book series written by Colin Meloy (frontman for The Decembrists) and illustrated by Meloy’s wife, Carson Ellis. Meloy and Ellis are Portlanders, too, and the sense of place they and the Laika team bring out is note-perfect.

The most remarkable thing about “Wildwood” is its massive sweep. The grand finale is a battle sequence that would put “Braveheart” to shame, with hundreds of animated animals taking up arms and sacrificing their lives. (The PG-13 rating is to be taken seriously for that reason.) The stop-motion animation, augmented with some computer work, is intense, overwhelming and intimate in ways that even live-action films have difficulty achieving.

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‘Wildwood’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language. Running time: 132 minutes.