Henry Gaiman's Coraline

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In a dark fantasy following the footsteps of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, Henry Selick returns to creepy stop-motion animation with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, an eerie yet entertaining film following a young girl’s journey to true independence while wrestling for the affection of her detached parents and discovering the danger of parents on the other side of the parenting spectrum.
Coraline (Dakota Fanning), a girl not nice by animation’s usual female protagonist standards, moves to the Pink Palace apartments with her busy and detached parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), stay-at-home gardening writers. The eccentric Russian (Ian McShane) upstairs and the retired English actresses (Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders) downstairs …show more content…

Coraline spends much of the first act attempting to define herself as an independent explorer – and she nearly ends up down a well. She pursues constantly the goal of adding some excitement to what she believes is an extremely dull life: stuck indoors, school uniforms, and a dilapidated house. Coraline’s primary characteristic is something most children can identify with – boredom, a theme reminiscent of Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Even after exploring the surrounding terrain, almost falling in a well, and meeting a possible new friend, Coraline remains dissatisfied with her available entertainment. Despite being introduced as independent, Coraline annoys both her parents in an attempt to be given something to do, culminating in her father’s outburst: “Go out and count all the doors and windows and write that down on. List everything that's blue. Just let me …show more content…

A portal narrative, long favored by many fantasy writers, makes a clean distinction between the fantasy and the reality. Although such a narrative is never so simple, the distinction is intended to lay a foundation for a secure return to the real world. Of course, this neat closing only works as long as the two worlds stay securely separate, but this is not the case with Coraline: the doll and other lures are leaked from the Other World, drawing Coraline’s life – and soul – into the Other Mother’s

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