‘Wildwood’ review: Animation studio LAIKA break fresh ground with dazzling stop motion adventure | Reviews

Dir. Travis Knight. USA. 2026. 130mins

The latest film from Portland-based animation studio LAIKA, adapted from a children’s novel by Colin Meloy (frontman for indie rock band The Decemberists) about a teenage girl who discovers a magical realm, Wildwood contains plenty of familiar tropes –there are similarities with everything from Narnia to LAIKA’s own Coraline. But if the story lacks some originality, the execution more than makes up for it. The dazzling stop motion animation breaks fresh ground in terms of scale, intricacy and ambition. You won’t have seen anything quite like this before.

Staggering visual spectacle and technical accomplishment

Wildwood’s director and LAIKA studio head Travis Knight is no stranger to bold and ambitious uses of stop motion as a medium. His directorial debut at LAIKA, Kubo And The Two Strings, featured the largest stop motion puppet ever to be built, the 18-foot-tall Skeleton Demon, But Wildwood’s scale surpasses that of all the studio’s previous films, on every level. For a start, it runs at over two hours; a factor which, together with some genuinely disturbing content (the film has an PG13 certificate in the US), will likely skew the audience to the older end of the family demographic when it is released in the US and UK on October 23 following a London premiere. Its staggering visual spectacle and technical accomplishment could see it become a significant player in what is shaping up to be an unusually forceful awards season for animation.

Twelve-year-old Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is given one strict rule when babysitting her infant brother Mac. Don’t take him out of the house. She breaks it, of course. What’s the worst that could happen to him at a deserted playground in downtown Portland, Oregon? She gets her answer when Mac is kidnapped by a huge murder of crows whose rattling wings darken the whole sky. She pursues them on her bike into a nearby forest, with a nerdy fellow school kid named Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) an unwelcome tag-along. There she discovers the magical realm of Wildwood.

There’s a labour of love quality evident in the filmmaking, not just in the exact artistry of the model making but also in the way in which the personality of the location is evoked. Portland is brought to life in all its quirkiness and creativity in a glorious early sequence. Prue, hopped up on pre-teen rebellion and the giddy thrill of speed, barrels through the city on her bike, with her baby brother squealing his excitement from a little trailer bouncing haphazardly behind her. The densely detailed streets of downtown Portland zip by so quickly that it’s almost impossible to take it all in.

Even once the story has left the city and entered the forest, the film repurposes recognisable Portland landmarks. The ’Impassable Wilderness’ that Prue must enter to try and save her brother is based on Portland’s Forest Park. A local landmark, Pittock Mansion, keeps its name but becomes a seat of government for the people and creatures of South Wood, one of several uneasily coexisting realms within the magical woodland.

Presiding over the story is that stalwart of fairytale peril, the evil queen. In this case, she’s known as the Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan): formerly the beloved ruler, her spirit was curdled by grief over the death of her son and she turned to the dim arts, recruiting an army of coyotes to do her evil bidding. The fate of baby Mac rests in her hands.

Or at least it does until Prue does the impossible and unites the various factions within the enchanted forest, bringing together the birds of the Avian Principality, the tattooed bandits, the animals from the South Wood and the tree-worshiping seers. The climactic battle sequence is eye-opening both for the unusually graphic depictions of violence and for the extraordinary complexity from an animation point of view.

But for all the spectacle, the real power of the film is in the petite expressive details: the curl of a boy’s toes as he balances on a the edge of a balcony; Curtis’ stricken reflection in the sword he has just used to save Prue’s life; the compact, reassuring finger squeeze of two children, hand in hand against a terrifying world.