Animator Henry Selick made quite the splash when, after working as an in-betweener and trainee animator at Disney (he worked on Pete’s Dragon (1977), The Small One (1978) and The Fox and the Hound (1981)), he graduated to director with the seasonal classic The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). He followed it with another hit, the Roald Dahl adaptation James and the Giant Peach (1996) but his career was derailed by the box office failure of Monkeybone (2001), an ill-advised attempt to marry live-action with his trademark stop motion animation. His reputation was restored by the successful – commercial, critical and artistic – of Coraline, the first 3D stop motion feature film, based on the 2002 novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman.

The first feature from stop motion specialists Laika, Coraline charts the strange adventures of its eponymous young heroine, Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who moves with her workaholic and inattentive parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) from Pontiac, Michigan, to the Pink Palace Apartments in Ashland, Oregon. While her parents largely ignore her, absorbed in their work, Coraline befriends the landlady’s grandson, Wyborne “Wybie” Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr), and a stray black cat (Keith David). Wybie gives her a ragdoll with buttons for eyes that resembles Coraline and it in turn guides her to a small door in her bedroom behind which is a mysterious brick wall. A mouse from the mouse circus run by her neighbour Sergei Alexander Bobinsky (Ian McShane) leads her through the door and into a portal to a parallel universe where Coraline meets her Other Mother and Father, both with buttons eyes. Back in her own world, Bobinsky and eccentric retired burlesque performers April Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miriam Forcible (Dawn French) caution her about the other realm but Coraline ignores them and becomes more enamoured of her alternate parents who are far more attentive and caring. But the Other Mother is really the hideous, spider-like Beldam, and wants Coraline to stay with her forever – and she wants her eyes…

Selick’s script expanded on Gaiman’s novella, adding the character of Wybie (Gaiman had approached the director as he was finishing the novella and, having greatly enjoyed The Nightmare Before Christmas, suggested that Selick should tackle a film version) and he brought in Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi to work on the concept designs. The result is a gorgeous modern fairy tale, set in a richly textured world, full of detail and densely realised by Selick and his team on almost 150 miniature sets. The animation is staggeringly good, fooling some into believing that it was achieved using CGI (there was some but a very small amount) so smooth is it. Every single object you see, from sets to costumes, to models to props were specially created for the film using three state of the art 3D printers adding to the film’s uniqueness, a wholly remarkable look that switched from a muted colour palette for the real world to something more vibrant for The Other World.

Technically then it’s a triumph (it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature but lost out to Pixar’s Up (2009)) with some eye-watering psychedelic weirdness when The Other World starts to disintegrate at the end, a disturbingly fleshy portal between the two worlds and characters that you soon forget are animated at all. The voice cast are excellent and a gorgeous score, every bit as distinctive and haunting as the visuals is supplied by French composer Bruno Coulais (the young girl heard singing on the soundtrack was, coincidentally, also named Coraline). But there’s more to Coraline than just stunning animation. Selick’s script expands the novella sensitively, and he adopts a surprising but very welcome slower pace than you’d normally see in this sort of thing and Selick isn’t afraid to once again put the willies up his target audience. The Nightmare Before Christmas had its share of macabre moments but Coraline goes even further – some of it is genuinely scary stuff, creepier than many contemporary horror films aimed at older audiences. The button-eyed inhabitants of The Other World are eerie enough but when the Beldam reveals her true appearance it’s very likely more than a few of the very youngest viewers decided that enough was enough.

Those younger viewers might also have blanched at the implied eyeball violence, arachnid-like surrogate parents, complete with hideous web, and unsettling characters but there were enough older, braver viewers to ensue something like a cult following. It works brilliantly as an introduction to the simple joys of being frightened by a film for younger viewers while giving older audiences plenty to chew on in Selick’s moving look at the unreliability of families and the pleasures of mingling with eccentrics and oddballs. It all added up to a sizable hit at the box office, one with doesn’t need the distracting gimmicky of 3D and which works just as well – if not better in fact – when viewed “flat”.

After Coraline, Selick left Laika (who went on to produce ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Missing Link (2019)) for an ill-fated sojourn with Pixar and Disney where he worked on developing a project initially called ShadeMaker and then The Shadow King which was never made, and another Gaiman adaptation, The Graveyard Book which also fell by the wayside. He belatedly returned to the screen in 2022 with Wendell & Wild for Netflix. There never seemed to have been any desire by anyone to make a sequel to Coraline and that’s exactly as it should be. It’s a beautifully made, well told and nicely acted little gem that simply needs no further elaboration.