Coraline was released in 2009 as an animated stop motion fantasy horror movie made by Laika studio that gained a heavy following when it was released.
It the most popular film of the studio and the third highest grossing stop motion animated movie of all time, beaten by Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and rightfully so as it is near perfect.
Coraline is about a girl named Coraline Jones and her parents that buy an isolated house courtesy of Pink Palace apartments, where she meets the neighbors, other residents within the house, and a parallel universe within the house where everything is ideal for her.
The Other Mother is the single best part of the whole film and is a contender for best antagonist in any movie, mopping the floor with both her concepts and execution, where most villains only fit the bill one way or the other.
The Other Mother is a spider of the mind, luring and trapping troubled children with a world containing what they would find impressive and perfect, before taking out their eyes and eating them.
This is especially shown through Coraline’s interactions with her parents compared to her other parents, her real parents neglect her and give her sub par food, and her other parents seem to give her amazing food and deliver on all that the real parents promise in grandiose and over the top ways.
A good example of this is the garden that the parents write about but never grow being a Coraline-shaped garden tended to by the Other Father in a mantis machine with sentient flowers. This is her web that she weaves.
Later on the Other Mother’s facade begins to fade when the cat begins talking to Coraline, revealing things like how everything that the Other Mother doesn’t know impresses her victim does not exist in the other world, and that the world is much smaller than the real one.
This gives the idea of hopelessness that is amplified by the state of the others near the final confrontation, like a rotted Other Father being forced to harm Coraline through the Other Mother and the mechanical mantis he controlled.
Even when she is playing the game that actively reverts what she did with Coraline finding the previous victim’s eyes she attempts to manipulate her through one of her puppets, saying she’d be happier there.
She’s a twist villain that is so well done it takes a while to realize she even is one.
Everything else great about the movie revolves around the Other Mother, which is why this review is entirely about her.
The only problem with the movie is that the acrobat twin sisters are a little bit much and makes the movie a little bloated, as her parents and other neighbors feel like enough of her life being terrible for the Other Mother to cheer up Coraline.
But they provide a believable way for Coraline to defeat the Other Mother so their existence isn’t unnecessary and Coraline actually beating the Other Mother feels less like she’s being incompetent.
This movie gains a 9/10 rating and deserves the cultural impact it created and the praise it gets.
