Henry Selick
Coraline

Coraline is an adventurous and dynamic girl, frustrated by the sudden move to a house that leaves much to be desired, with parents always immersed in work who trade her a few seconds of attention for hours where she seems not to exist. Despite her efforts to find new stimuli and activities, the girl struggles to find her place in a reality she dislikes, far from her friends and immersed in a depressing context. The new neighbors are not much, eccentric old ladies and crazy alcoholics, with the only semblance of normality being a boy and his horrid black cat, whom she does not particularly like.

However, the new house hides a secret passage, seemingly a bricked-up door that at night transforms into a tunnel leading to a parallel dimension. This new world manifests as an idealized reality of the protagonist's dreams, where everyone goes along with her, dedicates time and attention to her, and where the world seems to revolve around her. It doesn't take long before this parallel reality becomes more exciting and coveted than the world she came from. The sinister details that gradually emerge don't seem to greatly diminish the girl's happiness, at least until her alternative parents express the desire to keep her in their world. The path that unfolds from there becomes a dark and intricate journey toward a truth decidedly more horrible and frightening than could have been expected.

Based on Neil Gaiman's bestseller, the stop-motion adaptation of Coraline could only be signed by Selick, who finds in the dark and unsettling atmospheres of the story the spark that had brought him so much glory with "Nightmare Before Christmas": like and more than the masterpiece of '93, every frame of Coraline exudes atmosphere and a meticulous attention to detail, further raising the bar in such a difficult and laborious genre to make, which has, not by accident, remained the craft and pride of few, contrary to the increasingly accessible and democratic computer graphics.

If the film written by Burton and "James and the Giant Peach" were ultimately intended for everyone but with a special eye for the younger ones, Coraline contains humor and reflections that the latter will hardly understand. Selick adapts the book by smoothing out the dialogues a bit and adding the character of Wybie, but keeps intact the disturbing events that characterize the second part of the film, with some scenes that will easily provoke nightmares for the very young.

A little gem, shining far from the sea of mediocrity of animated films (of all kinds) we have witnessed lately.