At this time of year, everybody watches The Nightmare Before Christmas, a charming stop-motion trans-holiday movie that has become an icon and maybe the movie most closely associated with the visionary aesthetic of Tim Burton. But of course as many will tell you, despite his name being above the title claiming ownership, Burton did not direct it, a man called Henry Selick did. And in animation circles, Selick is something of a legend, especially in the stop-motion format. He followed up Nightmare with James and the Giant Peach, then the less fondly-remembered Monkeybone, before helming Laika’s debut feature Coraline, with each subsequent movie his technique and the scope of his work evolving.
Wendell & Wild, produced for Netflix, is his first movie since Coraline in 2009, and it comes with a lot of anticipation. Not just for Selick’s return though, as this film based off an unpublished children's book by him and Clay McLeod Chapman, is produced and co-written by Jordan Peele (though his name, unlike Burton’s, is not plastered over Selick’s); and additionally Peele and Keegan-Michael Key voice the titular two demons, marking a charming reunion of the comedy double act for the first time in about six years. Peele’s sensibilities ring through clearly, so does the distinctly comedic voice of the duo, who were approached about it back in 2015; but Selick is in full command of his artistry here in a way he rarely seemed to have been before, and the result is manic, weird, and ever so gently creepy.
The film is centred on an orphan girl Kat Elliott (voiced by Lyric Ross), who lost her parents in a car accident which she blames on herself. As a teenager she is returned to her hometown of Rust Bank, once a thriving brewery community now fallen to the bleak and penny-pinching grip of a private prison company; and she is enrolled in the equally dour Catholic school that has been set up there. It’s a really unique environment that draws on Selick’s attraction to shabby, ramshackle designs, dark colours, and general moodiness but without the mere fact of the movies’ gothic impressions to account for that. The for-profit prison company, Klaxon -which serves as the narrative’s principal villain amidst various other actors who temporarily take that role -feels unmistakably like a Peele addition in its’ critical political purpose. It is impossible to extract the sights this institution has on Rust Bank from the impoverished nature of the community and its’ mostly non-white residents. It’s also hard not to notice how one of the Klaxons appears to largely be a physical caricature of Boris Johnson, who in 2019 promised to build 10,000 new prisons in the U.K. as part of his election campaign.
As this environment and local political situation is established so too is a bizarre underworld that seems to entirely exist on the body of a giant demon called Buffalo Belzer (voiced by Ving Rhames). Brothers Wendell and Wild sleep in his nostril and spend their days rejuvenating his head with a special hair cream whilst fantasizing about opening their own amusement park. Kat is identified as their apparent “Hell Maiden” and through the understanding on her part that they could bring her parents back from the dead, she summons them, only for them to see to their own ambitions ahead of hers.
Before getting to the complicated moving parts and various double crosses of the ultimately convoluted plot, it’s worth looking at the animation where it concerns these two which is rather inventive. Firstly, Wendell and Wild are designed off of Key and Peele themselves, but where they exist in that claymation-looking mould of the other characters when in the world of the living, they are rendered in more of a flat and cartoony dimension when in their own realm. There’s a palpable hand-drawn aspect to their expressions here that is really refreshing and it marks a strong point of distinction between two separate worlds, but really it just facilitates the use of alternative stop-motion techniques that give licence for experimentation. Selick really embraces this and the overall style of the piece, which is full of unique character designs that certainly demonstrate a shared DNA with Nightmare Before Christmas and such, but are fully distinct on their own terms. Kat’s look especially is compelling, her goth aesthetic matching perfectly the exaggerations of her features and all her varied contrasts to that overbearing and controlled Catholic setting, with its’ shabby architecture ND rat-penguin nuns. The world itself is also drawn with imaginative texture, dominant shades of purple and black permeating the town against its’ snow white climate, suggestive of the presence of Wendell and Wild before they even show up there.
When they do, it’s genuinely fun to see the script turn on them -presenting these funny, endearing characters in fairly direct conflict to Kat, as they first resurrect the recently murdered schoolmaster Father Best (James Hong), who recruits them into resurrecting the dead town council members for the Klaxons’ vote, thus putting him in their good graces to supposedly keep the school functional, on the promise to Wendell and Wild that they would get to make their theme park. It’s very much multiple layers of characters becoming villains out of self-interest, with the Klaxons at the very top of the pecking order. All the while Kat mainly just cares about getting her parents back and atoning for her own guilt. There are also story arcs for the preppy star student who happens to be the Klaxons’ daughter, and for Kat’s friend Raúl, whose mother runs the town council and who is perhaps the first openly transgender character in an American animated movie; and of course Angela Bassett’s Sister Helley who shares a particular kinship with Kat and has a big secret of her own -you can see how this movie would be difficult to keep up with. It is overstuffed with plotting and characters that feel superfluous to the needs of the story. Much as I like James Hong, Father Best is a middleman who doesn’t really serve a purpose the Klaxons themselves couldn’t play, and Helley mostly exists to bring about Kat’s major moment of truth. What the movie ultimately does with regards to her parents could also have been cut, having no bearing really on the important lesson for her. And the consequences of Wendell and Wild abandoning Belzer turns into a kind of anti-climax. Credit to Selick and his team for relaying as much personality as they do in spite of the relentless plotting, but the pacing and flow is overall affected in the adverse by its’ sheer breadth.
Still, it’s difficult to argue against the visual ingenuity that comes about through a lot of this, or the potent gothic tone. Wendell & Wild isn’t as drenched in Halloween iconography as Nightmare Before Christmas, nor is it as genuinely scary as Coraline, but it nicely captures a spooky mood drawing from several sources. It also feels often consciously indebted to Roald Dahl, with similarly defined kid characters going up against horrible adults. It’s hard not to be taken by the virtues of its’ story, and the charms of its’ animation and voice talent. Even just the rhythms of Key and Peele’s humour is a treat! And it’s really impressive to see a kids’ movie like this openly take on the prison industrial complex, the Catholic school system, and the patterns of disenfranchisement that are necessary for both, in emphatic and honest ways. All in all, it is a worthy addition to the stop-motion horror canon, and a welcome return for its’ founding father.
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