The jumping mouse circus is back in town: Celebrating Coraline’s 15th anniversary

By Ronan McGuire and Owen Noble

Image couresy of Focus Features, via The New York Times

Whether driven by nostalgia or curiosity, audiences from all over the world flocked to their local theater to celebrate the “Coraline” 15th anniversary rerelease. Fortunately, this remastering did not require any buttons or any sewing — simply tickets and a pair of 3D glasses.

“Coraline” tells the story of the blue-haired titular character Coraline Jones, who struggles to adapt when her family moves from her Michigan hometown to the Pink Palace apartments in Ashland, Oregon. As she explores, Coraline stumbles across a small door in her apartment that leads to a world that mirrors her own — but where everything is better! However, this paradise turns sinister as the truth of this place is slowly revealed, and the danger Coraline is in becomes fully apparent.

Although it is derived from a novella written by Neil Gaiman in 2002, “Coraline” is set apart from the average film adaptation by indulging in actual creativity, heart, and genuine care for the craft of filmmaking. Of course, this isn’t to say that all adaptations are terrible, but “Coraline” certainly set a lofty precedent by being a new and potent creation in its own right.

Specifically, “Coraline” excels in using contrast to its advantage; long before internet creepypastas, “Coraline” was using its innocent hand-crafted style to portray genuinely disturbing imagery.

The uncanny valley, a term used to describe when an image falls between stylized and realistic in an uncomfortable way, is used to its full effect — the characters are obviously cartoonish, but the use of claymation makes things just real enough to be disconcerting.

In fact, the text itself is a dissection of this uncanny valley; “Coraline” travels to another world that is almost real — almost normal — but something’s just slightly… off. The new world is fantastical, but seems to have a dark underbelly. Her friends are here, but they don’t always seem like her friends. Her parents are here, sweeter than ever, but their eyes have been replaced with buttons.

This creepiness is only aided by “Coraline”’s connection to the audience — children. What child hasn’t experienced boredom, or the discombobulation of moving, or the discomfort of interacting with eccentric neighbors? Children are meant to see themselves in her, and if you, as a child, imagined seeing your parents with their eyes ripped out, wouldn’t you be disturbed? Nightmares aside, “Coraline” was a massive surprise success for Laika Studios, and it set the ball rolling for them to produce more stop-motion films such as “ParaNorman” and “Kubo and the Two Strings” Aside from its impact on the world of animation and general pop culture, the film left a large imprint in the generational memory of the children who watched it. Who hasn’t met someone who was absolutely traumatized by watching it too young? Or met someone who adores it to the point of obsession? It is certainly one of the defining childhood films of our generation — even if it kept us up at night.