ParaNorman 2012
Laika studios made a string of mostly acclaimed stop motion animated movies, starting with Coraline, which I thought was pretty good. The next movie they made was ParaNorman in 2012 and eventually I bought a digital 4-pack of Laika movies so I could see them all in 4k. ParaNorman feels a little like The Nightmare Before Christmas with some disturbing imagery despite the fact that it is geared towards kids. That leaves me wondering who the audience is. The movie borrows heavily from other movies where a character is able to see dead people like The Sixth Sense and then the much lighter Ghost Town. Also there is this group of kids that has to figure out the mystery or the entire town will be destroyed (like a lot of movies). These are mostly stereotypes including the misfit kid and bullies and the vacuous older sister who barely tolerates her little brother. Everything is highly derivative. Sometimes that can work, because the formula has worked before, but I don't think it is executed that well here. It takes a lot of running around and running away from zombies before much is revealed about solving the problem which then seems a little hurried. Also the characters here are pretty grotesque-looking caricatures of people, which was a design choice I didn't like. Then there was something odd going on with the faces of the characters where textures or freckles were always moving around from frame to frame. That's disappointing from a studio that should be able to do better, but apparently they were trying some new techniques and undoubtedly trying to trim production costs for this very time-intensive style of animation. It is still a good movie and has a decent message eventually, but I think it leans too heavily into horror for a kids' movie (or for me).
Written: 23 Feb 2024
Owned on: Digital