Have you seen a good movie lately? If you have not, you should definitely check out Coraline.

Have you seen the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas or James and the Giant Peach? Henry Selick is the director of those works as well as Coraline. The Animation studio used is called LAIKA studios; they also animated ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, and The Boxtrolls, all using stop-motion.

The film version of Coraline took about four years to complete. Crazy, huh?  But there are many tiny details that need to be perfected to look good, and if you have seen this movie, you would know they don’t skip out on the details. The  goal for this movie was to explore creating a dark fairy tale and the theme of child neglect.  

Long term summary-

Coraline’s plot centers around a girl who moves houses. She gets bored, so she explores. In her apartment, called “The Pink Palace,” there are three main floors, her family occupying two. The house also has a basement and a smaller attic. She explores only her two floors in this part of the movie. She finds a small door and with help from her mother opens it. It seems that there is nothing behind it, so she loses faith. Until, a little mouse wakes her up in the middle of the night. It leads her to the door and it turns out, the door is open. It leads her through a portal to a replica of her own house, but it is not her real house.  Her “other mother” is there instead of her real mother. Everybody in the other world has buttons for eyes. The other mother creeps out Coraline, and she goes back, but not by the portal. She goes back to sleep in the other world. 

Coraline meets Mr. Bobinski, and his jumping mice circus advises her to “not go through the little door”. Coraline then goes to Ms. Spink’s and Ms. Forcible’s floor, where she gets a tea reading. The tea leaves look like the other mother’s hand. Ms. Spink says she’s in terrible danger. Then Ms. Spink says something peculiar: “Never Wear Green in Your Dressing Room”, and green just so happens to attract spiders. According to  countryliving.com, spiders are  attracted to green because they are basically colorblind, and sensitive to light in the green wavelength. Anyways, Wybie, the owner’s grandson, tells Coraline he’s not allowed to go inside the pink palace. He explains that his grandma had a twin sister who was “stolen.” This is very peculiar. Then at night, Coraline sees the same mouse and goes to the other world once again. Everything seems to be perfect until the other mother asks to sew buttons in Coraline’s eyes. She refuses and Coraline can’t get back home. She goes into a room, where the other mother turns into a tall, pale and scary thing. The other mother shoves Coraline into a mirror and Coraline meets the souls of the other mother’s victims. They all have buttons for eyes. Coraline escapes, but the portal is dull and brown, not pretty like the other times. She escapes, but her parents aren’t there. Coraline goes to Ms.Spink and Ms. Forcible’s floor, and gets a peculiar triangle shaped rock. 

Coraline wakes up the next day with the cat in her face. The cat guides her to her parents, who are in the mirror. Coraline finds a doll of her parents, knowing the other mother has taken them. Coraline suits up and goes through the door. The cat tells her to play a game with the other mother. Coraline’s other mother tricked her into thinking she was her mother. Coraline falls for it. Coraline makes  a deal (which is playing a game.) with the other mother, and if she loses, she gets buttons sewn in her eyes. They agree, and the other mother disappears. Coraline goes through many challenges to get the ghost eyes. Everything is fading into white, and Coraline is forced to go inside where the other mother is. The other mother turns out to be a spider-like creature. The other mother falls for Coraline’s trick. But the floor turns  into a spider web. Coraline escapes, but her family acts like nothing happened. The movie shifts to a scene where Mr. Bobinski, Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible, Coraline and her parents, and Wybie are in the garden, which is looking bountiful and beautiful. Wybie’s grandmother enters, and Coraline introduces herself. Then, the camera shifts and reveals the garden, which is in the  shape of the Other Mother. Could she still be out there? I don’t know, that’s for you to decipher.

 Overall, I rate this movie a 9.5/10. The animation is beautiful, the plot gets you hooked, but I would say it’s very different from the book. The book is more isolated, and Coraline would most likely not be able to escape without the help of others. There are many, many theories speculating about this movie, and I’m sure if you search up “Coraline theories”  on youtube you could learn much more than that in the movie. Because afterall, the idea behind this is to make it the scariest stop motion. It’s also meant to be a dark fairy tale, and  explore child neglect.     

Theories:(these are all from uicradio.net and youtube) 

The other mother uses real humans as puppets- 

As you can see in the movie, the other father and Wybie help Coraline in many ways, but the other mother created her puppets so that they follow all her commands. So the other mother could have possibly kidnapped Wybie and the Father to use as her puppets, and replaced them with puppets. 

Mr. Bobinski Survived Chernobyl-

Because Mr. Bobinski has blue skin and is Russian, he could have possibly survived Chernobyl. We also see that he has a “hero badge” for helping clean up after the disaster happened. Also, due to radiation exposure, his skin could have turned blue. 

Everyone in Coraline is dead-

In the beginning, Coraline’s mother refers to the “accident”, in which she is pointing to a neck brace, so Coraline is possibly dead or in a coma due to a car crash, and all of the movie  is a dream. 

Coraline never escaped-

As we can see, the can can disappear only in the other world. And also, when Coraline is leaving the last time, the portal is dark and brown. Also, the other mother can shapeshift as we can see in the movie. She could have shapeshiped into Coraline’s mother. We also see an image when the camera shifts at the last scene of the movie, and it looks like the other mother. 

Wybie’s grandma traded Wybie’s place for Coraline-

In the movie, we can see that Wybie’s grandma doesn’t usually let people with kids move in, and she doesn’t let Wybie in the Pink Palace. Maybe, Wybie’s grandma let Coraline move in so that the Beldam wouldn’t target Wybie. She could have possibly known about the Beldam all along. 

Short summary- Coraline is a movie about a girl who is bored out of her mind after moving to “the pink palace”, so she explores her new apartment style house.She eventually finds a small door and asks her mother for the key. Once her mother gives her the key and Coraline opens the door, there is nothing but bricks. Later that night, Coraline follows a small mouse to the door, which is open. Coraline goes through the door, and discovers “other mother”, which is like her own mother, but different. Coraline finds the other mother startling, so she leaves. The next day, Coraline’s parents are gone, so Coraline goes to the small door, which is open.  She finds the other mother once again and the other mother promises Coraline anything she wants, but the other mother would sew buttons in Coraline’s eyes. Coraline refuses, and tries to go home, but can’t. She goes through the door, and her own mother is there. Then, her mother turns into the other mother and grabs coraline by her ear, and shoves coraline in a mirror. There are other children there, and they all have buttons for eyes. They explain that the other mother promised them everything they wanted, and when they agreed to her sewing buttons in their eyes, she took their souls. She and the other mother agree to play a game, with the agreement being that if the other mother wins, she gets to sew buttons in Coraline’s eyes; if Coraline wins, she and the other children get to escape with their souls. The items that Coraline collects are a marble, a ring, and the top of a gear shift. She collects all those items, but the other mother lures her into a web. Coraline escapes the web, but the portal is dull, not how it was the first time we saw it. Coraline’s parents are back and act like nothing happened. The scene shifts to her garden, which looks oddly like the other mother’s face. Did Coraline escape? That’s for you to decipher….

It is a creepy and unsettling movie, so maybe keep that in mind while watching. (It is not a movie to watch around your younger brother!)