Core Align

A little girl frustrated at the lack of attention given her by her parents is at first delighted to find a more accommodating Mom and Dad with button eyes. 2009's Coraline Is Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2002 novella, capturing some of the eeriness of its source material and adding a lot of cartoonish charm.

I was feeling a little sorry I didn't like Good Omens 2 and wanted to watch something to reaffirm my fondness for Neil Gaiman. I read Coraline when it came out. I was such a Gaiman fan then, I bought the hardcover book and the audiobook read by Gaiman himself. I remember sitting in my car, listening to it, in a mall parking garage where I liked to go to be alone. I would say, outside of Sandman, Coraline is his best work, that I've read.

It's a simple concept with a suggestion of old-fashioned morality pushed to a slightly sadistic level. It feels like Hansel and Gretel or The Snow Queen, something from Hans Christian Anderson or the Grimm Brothers where you can clearly see the moral instruction but the story fills out with strange or frightening ideas in a pleasingly gratuitous way.

I kind of wish the character designs had learned closer to realistic. It's harder to appreciate the strangeness of the other world when Coraline herself already has a massive head with a flat top. But Selick's stop motion is the perfect medium. I believe these button eyed people can coexist with these people who have eyeballs. In live action with makeup or cgi buttons, it would have felt more clearly demarcated. The stiff, jerkiness of the stop motion adds to the sense of nightmare.

Coraline is available on Netflix in Japan.