For all their flights of fancy, the most enduring fables and fairy tales often reveal serious truths about human behavior. Two current fantasy films admirably uphold that tradition. Wildwood is a breathtaking animated adventure that follows a teenage girl on a perilous journey into an enchanted forest when she’s forced to grow up and take responsibility for her actions in the ordinary world. In a more whimsical mode, Wicker is a sly, surreal romance set in a medieval village whose citizens mistreat a spinster fisherwoman until she finds a mate in a most unlikely form and further infuriates her detractors.
‘Wildwood’
Laika Entertainment, the Portland, Ore.-based studio that is one of the major modern-day proponents of stop-motion animation, has produced some ingenious, visually striking movies, especially Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings. With Wildwood, Laika has ascended to another level, delivering an ambitious, sprawling quest narrative that takes its reluctant teen heroine Prue McKeel from modern-day Portland to the Impassable Wilderness, a nearby, hidden woodland. Prue and her nerdy, steadfast classmate Curtis Mehlberg find themselves in this magical place where humans live alongside, and sometimes dominate, anthropomorphic animals, after a group of sinister crows snatches her baby brother, Mac, from under her nose.
Because Prue’s hippy-dippy parents counted on her to watch the infant, she is determined to rescue him, even if it means entering the near-impenetrable forest. Somehow, she needs to stop the crows as they carry Mac to the castle of Alexandra, the witchy dowager governess with a nefarious plan for the baby and who will destroy anyone in her way. A rebel group opposes the grief-consumed, power-hungry Alexandra. Her army of vicious coyotes is spoiling for battle. In other words, war is on the horizon with the fate of the Wilderness and little Mac in the balance. Jeopardy is everywhere. Prue and her allies, including Curtis and some so-called bandits, are caught in the middle, and our heroine soon realizes the stakes are higher than she imagined.
Chris Butler based his alternately charming and rousing script on the 2011 novel Wildwood by Colin Meloy (lead singer of Portland rock band The Decemberists) and Carson Ellis. (The Portland connection here is considerable.) As for the look of the finished film, it’s spectacular from first scene to last. Though the primary animation style is stop-motion, Wildwood also incorporates CGI and 2D animation in an intricate yet seamless blend. Whether it’s a quiet moment between Prue and Curtis, a confrontation between Prue and her father, a ramble through the funky-chic streets of Portland, a de facto tour of Alexandra’s seat of power, an escape from a treacherous dungeon, massive battle sequences that call to mind classic war movies of yore, or a chase through verdant landscapes, Wildwood is a glorious sight to see.
It helps that the characters are so vivid and well-designed, from normies Prue and Curtis, to quintessential Portlandians Mr. and Mrs. McKeel, to the villainous Alexandra, to the obnoxious bureaucrats, aristocrats, and zoologically diverse denizens of the Wilderness. The voice actors further elevate the project, led by Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Prue, Jacob Tremblay as Curtis, and Carey Mulligan as Alexandra. Although in less prominent roles, the rest of the cast is just as praiseworthy: Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Richard E. Grant, Blythe Danner, Tantoo Cardinal, Len Cariou, Marc Evan Jackson, Rob Delaney, and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.
Considerable credit for the success of Wildwood should go to director Travis Knight, whose filmography includes overseeing Kubo and the Two Strings for Laika, as well as directing the live-action blockbuster Bumblebee, which is the most tolerable installment in the Transformers franchise. Knight also directed the recent, mediocre Masters of the Universe film, but Wildwood is so good that any previous misfire can be forgiven. At a considerable 132 minutes, it never flags, and it never fails to delight from moment to moment. At this point, it’s an easy choice for the best animated motion picture of the year and one of the best movies of any kind to be released in 2026. Frankly, it’s a masterpiece.
Note for the uninitiated: Stop-motion animation is a painstaking filmmaking technique that requires physical objects like puppets or models to be moved in miniscule stages and photographed one frame at a time. This creates the illusion of actual movement when the finished scene is played at regular speed. Early pioneers in stop-motion were Willis O’Brien, who animated the giant gorilla in the original King Kong (1933), and George Pal, whose Puppetoons shorts were made between 1932 and 1947 and who directed War of the Worlds (1953) and The Time Machine (1960). Pal particularly influenced director Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts) and truly presaged the work of England’s Aardman Animation (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep) and Laika.
Wildwood is currently in theaters.
‘Wicker’
Wicker is alternately sweet, sad, and wickedly funny as it recounts the tribulations and unexpected triumph of a middle-aged fisherwoman in a seaside town during a more primitive time. Unable to dispel the scent of fish that envelops her, she has never married. This is problematic in the patriarchal community where she lives. In fact, she’s ostracized by the other locals and resigned to living alone until, on a whim, she pays the town weaver to construct a husband out of wicker for her. Amazingly, the wicker husband comes to life and is devoted to the fisherwoman, making her the happiest woman around and driving the townspeople nuts. Jealousy, suspicion, and frustration bubble up, even on the part of the fisherwoman as she starts to doubt that the wicker husband truly loves her.
Adapting the short story The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills, the writing and directing team of Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson have constructed a piquant, poignant proto-feminist yarn that is immeasurably enhanced by the presence of leads as talented as Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård in the roles of the fisherwoman and the wicker husband. Stand-outs among the accomplished actors in the supporting cast are Elizabeth Debicki as the tailor’s wife, Peter Dinklage as the basket weaver, and Richard E. Grant as the town doctor. Special mention is due to the team behind Skarsgård’s make-up, which allows him to sell the character. If you can get past the inexplicable idea that an inert object woven out of wicker could come to life and bring happiness, support, and sexual satisfaction to a tragic figure like the fisherwoman, Wicker is an amusing, thoughtful, and genuinely romantic diversion that says its piece about communal and institutional cruelty and a woman’s place in society.
Wicker is currently in theaters.
