Filmmaking is inherently a commercial artform… Unless you’re Laika. Since opening their doors in 2005, the Oregon-based stop motion animation studio has released six features, starting with 2009’s Coraline, which grossed 189 million dollars against a 60 million dollar budget. That’s good work if you can get it, but their subsequent output, consisting of ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings, has experienced diminishing returns alongside ballooning costs. 2019’s Missing Link lost at least 80 big ones when it was all said and done, a death knell for any corporately-backed passion project without Phil Knight’s name on the dotted line. Having the CEO of Nike sign your checks all but insulates you from the industry’s callous ways, as further evidenced by the position of Knight’s son, Travis, as the studio’s go-to director. There are certainly worse things to do with your Air Jordan fortune than finance a string of strange, gorgeous, and heartfelt family entertainments, but having no one to answer to has put Laika in an odd position. They’re clearly making the movies that they want to see, but who else, exactly, are they for?

Presumably it’s kids like Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), though the movie she stars in, Wildwood, seems a bit fantastical for her taste. A 13-year-old living in Portland, she’s a good natured smart aleck with an aversion to childish things, most notably the dramatic warnings her father (Jake Johnson) constantly peddles about the nearby Impassable Wilderness. Undaunted by his admonitions, Prue takes her infant brother for a weekend jaunt across town, only to witness him be scooped up by a murder of crows, and carried off into the feared forest expanse. With only geeky tag-a-long Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) as company, Prue heads straight for the trees, discovering a magical, war torn world within the confines.

It’s a wonderland in there, a description that, when applied literally, has some unfortunate downsides, but we’ll start in the flowery figurative. With its 131 minute runtime and reported $100,000,000 price tag, Wildwood is both the longest and most expensive stop motion film ever made, and every last penny is right up there on screen. Stunned amazement rules the day, each frame awash in the ravishing color and meticulous detail of a museum piece. Helmer Knight, who’s returning to animation after a pair of tepidly-received live action blockbusters (Bumblebee, Masters of the Universe), loves to push the pace, but Wildwood never feels hasty or visually cluttered, optically organized by Caleb Deschanel’s ingenious cinematography. It’s fluid to the point of occasionally looking computer generated, and so awe inspiring that watching the movie can periodically take a backseat to gazing upon its grandeur, a pair of though-the-looking glass detriments that are ultimately steamrolled by astonishment. Minor gripes don’t hold up well to true majesty.

They do, however, find more traction when levied against the familiar, and the previous paragraph’s allusions to author Lewis Carroll aren’t accidental. His 1865 classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, playfully argued in favor of boundaryless creativity and imagination, a lesson that’s somehow resulted in over a century-and-a-half’s worth of copycats. Rather than charting its own path, Wildwood trains its every gesture on the blueprint, from its arbor-enthused setting and episodic storytelling to an evil queen (Carey Mulligan) and her band of anthropomorphized henchmen. It’s a rubric that’s now omnipresent enough to trickle into advertising, and for all the loving care that went into creating this movie’s animal costars, the foxes have you wondering about the Carfax, and the owl will have doctors fielding questions about Xyzal.

Laying its roots in the Rose City gives Wildwood the chance to Keep Laika Weird, and for a vanishingly brief prologue, Knight and his team indulge in the opportunity. The rice milk and derision toward western medicine feel a bit exhausted after so many seasons of Portlandia, but the city itself is glorious to behold, its streets and landmarks recreated down to the finest detail. Given our celluloid overexposure to fantastical universes, an entire stop motion picture made in the image of a real-world metropolis would be revelatory, though you sadly won’t find it here. After all, there’s a playbook to follow, one that allows for ample sight seeing but precious little in the way of surprise, both narratively and cosmetically.

The remaining shocks are mostly of the grisly variety, with the film wholly earning its attention-grabbing PG-13 rating. Characters swear, stab, and are burned, shot, and gored, particularly in a climactic battle that’s straight out of a The Lord of the Rings flick. Leaving the tykes at home is a must, but their older siblings will have their own struggles with the puerile humor, aimed directly at all the 7-year-olds who should, under no circumstances, be in attendance. This curious positioning in between ideal audiences is further compounded by some distractingly recognizable vocal performances, a horde that’s spearheaded by Awkwafina and counts Tom Waits, Charlie Day, and Mahershala Ali among its ranks. Wondering who, precisely, a movie is for can feel like circling the analytical drain, but Wildwood might only be geared toward 12-year-olds. Not 11. Not 13. 12.

They’ll have company come Oscar time, as each Laika release has garnered a Best Animated Feature nomination, a trend that Wildwood won’t be bucking. Their streak is also intact with critics, as RottenTomatoes has tabulated 122 reviews at this point without a single note of dissent. It’s not hard to see why; what Knight and company have accomplished here is impressive as a point of fact, the only 2026 release that can hold a candle to The Odyssey in terms of transmuting evident blood, sweat, and tears into genuine spectacle. Like director Christopher Nolan’s epic, its reliance on framework and troupes keeps the whole thing from properly engaging your emotions, but when pupils are this dilated, soiled tissues become something of an afterthought. One wishes Wildwood had a more unique yarn to spin, or had picked a more definitive lane on either side of the pre-teen rubicon, but the Knights needn’t worry about playing to the crowd. It’s their money, and their fancy. We just happened to get an invite.