Why Wildwood Might Be Laika's Darkest Masterpiece Yet

There’s a moment early in Wildwood where silence becomes a character. You feel it before you see it: the kind of hush that only handcrafted cinema can conjure. It arrives between creaks of a puppet’s joints and the rustle of painted leaves — small, intentional gestures that announce this is not just another animated movie.

Travis Knight guides Laika into a darker, more intricate territory with Wildwood, an adaptation of the Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis novel that folds together mystery, grief and childhood bravery. The plot is spare on paper: a teenage girl named Prue and her classmate Curtis set out into an enchanted forest after Prue’s baby brother is kidnapped. What follows is anything but predictable. They encounter a strange mansion and a woman delivering grave news about a coming war; the quest evolves into something larger than rescue — it becomes a passage into myth.

Laika’s stop-motion craft is the film’s heartbeat. Each frame feels sculpted, as if time itself were compressed and polished. That tactile quality — the slight imperfections, the physical presence of character models — gives faces a honesty that digital polish rarely imitates. Hearing voice performances from Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali and Awkwafina, you understand how the human touch extends from the puppet to the actors behind the microphones.

Critics have been unusually kind. Rotten Tomatoes collects 19 reviews so far and returns a perfect 100% freshness. Metacritic, with 11 reviews listed, sits at a strong 85 out of 100. Those headline numbers capture enthusiasm, but the praise lives in the specifics: Screen Rant awarded 100, calling the film an utterly mesmerizing blend of layered characters and inventive stop-motion. The Hollywood Reporter and The Telegraph also handed in perfect scores, labeling Wildwood Laika’s most ambitious — even masterpiece-level — effort to date.

Other outlets underline the film’s visual audacity. TheWrap highlights how remarkable the film appears even without knowing the painstaking process behind it; knowing the process only deepens the awe. Collider and Next Best Picture emphasize sequences that arrest and astonish, naming some of the most breathtaking moments of the year. Variety and IGN praise the film for balancing technical achievement with broad emotional reach, though IGN notes occasional narrative slips that keep it from absolute perfection.

Not every voice is unqualified in its praise. IndieWire offered a more measured take, pointing out that while the craftsmanship is undeniable, the movie can feel less magical in places — as if Laika’s meticulousness sometimes outshines the story’s emotional pull. The Guardian drew a comparison to Coraline, applauding the tactile realism of stop-motion and how that style yields more grounded, physical characters compared with the prevalent digital sheen of mainstream animation.

What emerges from these assessments is less a consensus than a pattern: Wildwood is an artistic triumph that pushes Laika beyond its comfort zone. It’s ambitious in scale and intimate in detail. It asks audiences to lean in, to trust textures and silences the way you might trust a storyteller leaning closer across a campfire.

If you love stop-motion for its craft, or if you’re curious about modern folktales retold with uncompromising artistry, Wildwood is worth the trip. See it for the scenery, stay for the strange, stubborn heart at its center.