PG-13 | 2h 10m | Family Fare, Fantasy | 2026
“Wildwood” is a two-plus-hour-long, rarely funny, children’s stop-motion tale that features heavy adult-oriented themes and graphic violence. It opens with a child’s suicide. It’s hardly surprising that it bombed at the box office.
The next scene includes a gender lecture by a clearly pro-vaccine Portland, Oregon hipster dad to his kid, after which the “camera” soon pans by a sign on a local building advertising “Drag Queen Story Hour.”
That detail, along with the fact that “Wildwood” got across-the-board rave reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, made it abundantly clear that this is more Hollywood-agenda grooming-trash.
Travis Knight, the lead animator and producer of “Coraline” and “ParaNorman,” directs the highly ambitious film. It’s the latest offering from the award-winning Laika animation studio.
What Goes On
At a Portland playground, tween-aged Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) witnesses a “murder of crows” kidnapping and flying away with her baby brother, Mac, into the Impassable Wilderness that lies just across the tracks from Portland. Prue’s über-nerd classmate Curtis (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) accompanies her as she tracks the crows into the vast forest, where they discover a parallel fantasy world.
It’s a dizzying world of anthropomorphic woodland flora and fauna: ent-like trees, black-magic sages, farmers, giant eagles, rats, sheep, and rabbits—a veritable hodgepodge of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Labyrinth,” and “The Lord of the Rings”-type fantasy-enchantments. Accordingly, it also features a brewing war between good and evil.
On one hand are the feuding leaders: the grief-driven Dowager Governess Alexandra (voiced by Carey Mulligan), and bearded Bandit King Brendan (voiced by Mahershala Ali).
Prue and Curtis get separated and have separate adventures. Prue’s “Avatar”-like ride on a giant eagle (voiced by Angela Bassett) is the movie’s highlight.
Eventually the two kids manage to reunite the various factions (like “Braveheart’s “Unite the clans!”) to take on Alexandra’s army of coyote soldiers, who are dressed in 19th-century Napoleonic uniforms a la “The Nutcracker.”
Flashbacks reveal the Dowager Governess Alexandra’s backstory; she became lost in a spiral of anger after the death of her son. She blames the vast wilderness for hiding his corpse and leaving her incomplete. She became monstrous, resorting to black magic to “resurrect” him back as a pale, wan, black-blooded, mechanical Pinocchio.
The people banished the Governess for being a witch. In return, she built a prison for those who oppose her in the form of cages suspended over an abyss. It’s like the prison in “Time Bandits,” guarded by her crows. Made mad by isolation and grief, she hatches a plan to sacrifice Prue’s infant brother to the Wilderness’ sentient ivy.
The Artistry
It must be said that the artistic effort on display in “Wildwood” is commendable—each frame features clever touches. The action set-pieces include complex chases and battles. At the end of all the Laika films, there’s a moment where the filmmakers display their craft. They show the sets and models they use, as well as the human team scurrying around in a blur of motion, to pose, repose, and photograph the painstaking labor involved in stop-motion animation.
However, while the movie attempts to run the emotional gamut of uplifting euphoria to deep sadness, the haggard and wizened human puppet visages are haggard and wizened, and feature exaggerated under-eye bags of exhaustion—even the kids have them. It failed to register an emotional blip for me. Their unappetizing, rubbery skin texture reminded me of a CPR dummy—can’t get enough Sani-Wipes on them. Where’s the beauty? But other than me, the entire critic body appears to have been ecstatic and emotionally overjoyed.
All in all, kid films that are used as drug-mules to smuggle adult darkness into the minds of the young and impressionable are rarely rewarded for it. “Wildwood” appears to be guilty of such an attempt. That’s a crying shame, because so much work and dedication clearly went into it.
‘Wildwood’
Director: Travis Knight
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Release Date: Oct. 23, 2026
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at features@epochtimes.nyc.
