Not too many studios are making stop-motion animation anymore outside of Laika in Portland, Ore. So it might surprise some to see the niche animation style in a new Netflix title that arrives just in time for the conclusion of spooky season, "Wendell & Wild."
Rather than being drawn on a computer and animated in a digital program like nearly all cartoons today, stop-motion animation involves small physical models in real environments. Artists photograph the models, move them slightly, photograph them again, and repeat that process to create the illusion of movement that is animation.
Director Henry Selick returns to the uncommon medium to helm "Wendell & Wild." He directed plenty of cult classics millennials grew up loving like "Nightmare Before Christmas," "James and the Giant Peach," and "Coraline."
"Wendell & Wild" follows the tragic story of Kat (Lyric Ross), a young Black girl whose parents died in a car crash when she was little. Kat survived the crash and considers herself cursed afterward, pushing others away because she doesn't want them to suffer a similar fate as her parents.
The audience is shown through creative shadows and outlines the next few years of Kat's life. The pain of blaming herself for the crash causes her to act out, she faces bullying, and before long, she's in juvenile detention.
But Kat is given a second chance through a rehabilitative program, placing her in a private Catholic school that is full of, in Kat's words, "show ponies." The school is also located in her hometown where the fatal crash took place. And it seems the town has fallen on hard times.
When the story isn't focused on Kat, it pivots to a couple of demon brothers jailed in the underworld, Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele). They spend their days using magic hair cream to keep their father from going bald by actually planting each follicle as though they were crops.
The demon brothers plan on escaping to the living world to build their own carnival. So they trick Kat into summoning them, promising to return her parents to life. But, these are demons, who are typically less than trustworthy. So they actually end up resurrecting other people in the same cemetery with that magic hair cream. High jinks ensue. Kat has to face her trauma and save the day.
Some of the magic used in "Wendell & Wild" is less-than-explained at times. But the film is silly enough that most members of the audience will just write that off as whimsical charm. It's nothing fans of Selick haven't experienced before in his animated films.
The film touches on so many poignant themes of racial inequalities, from the prison industrial complex to the robbing of diverse families, preventing them from building the same generational wealth as their white counterparts. The addition of a well-written trans man among the main characters who support and befriend Kat is inclusion done right.
"Wendell & Wild" contains beautiful art from Netflix Animation, a studio showing in films such as "The Sea Beast" and "Klaus" that it can compete with the likes of Disney and DreamWorks in terms of quality projects. Its stop-motion artistry is striking and helps add to the quirky world Selick and Peele wrote into their script.
Every artistic element in this movie matches a unified vision intended to capture the nostalgic spookiness millennials grew up with, not just in Selick's older films, but other projects from "The Addams Family" films of the '90s to cartoons like "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters." And it evolves those elements, mixing them with important racial lessons and gay representation.
On top of all that, there's a really, really cute goat named Gabby in this film. "Wendell & Wild" streams on Netflix after a brief stop in select theaters.
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None‘Wendell & Wild’
87 Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Angela Bassett, Lyric Ross, James Hong, Ving Rhames
Director: Henry Selick
Rating: PG-13 for violence, brief strong language, and substance use
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Streaming on Netflix