Wildwood Is the Longest Stop-Motion Film Ever Made, and It Earns Every Minute

I did not expect the most ambitious film of October to be made out of silicone and clay, but here we are. Wildwood, Travis Knight's adaptation of the Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis novel, opened on Friday and it runs 131 minutes, which makes it the longest stop-motion feature ever produced. Normally that sentence would make me nervous. In this case the early reviews are saying the opposite: nothing drags.

The story follows Prue McKeel, a Portland teenager whose baby brother is carried off by a flock of crows into an enchanted forest outside the city. Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue, with Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali and Awkwafina among a very deep voice cast. Laika has been building toward something this size since Kubo and the Two Strings, and from what I have seen of the forests and mansions in the trailer, the scale is genuinely startling for hand-animated work.

What I keep thinking about is how rare this is. Most studios gave up on stop-motion decades ago because it is slow, expensive and unforgiving. Laika kept going, and this is the payoff. If you only see one animated film in theatres this autumn, make it this one, and see it big. I will post a full review once I have sat through all 131 minutes myself. Are you taking the kids, or going on your own?