Animation Review - Coraline

Review 2: Coraline (2009)

'Coraline' is an animated feature based on the 2002 novel by Neil Gaiman. The animation used is a stop-motion 3-D animation and tells the story of a girl named Coraline, who has just recently moved into a house with her parents.

Figure 1: Coraline and her father. Personal collection.

The movie uses a lot of close-up shots for every scene, allowing for the viewers to closely focus on Coraline and her daily life between her real world and the ‘Other World’ that she discovers in her house. This also helps the movie to build tension and entice the viewers to sympathize with the main character.

The design of the characters themselves are unique and differ from each other, from the shape of the figures to the colors used. For example, Coraline’s colors are accentuated with bright colors while her parents’ colors are usually described with earthen tones and are dull.

Figure 2: Coraline interacts with one of her neighbours.

There is also a contrast of colors used to describe Coraline’s real world and the Other World – while her world is characterized with dull, earthen colors, the colors in the Other World are brighter and more cheerful, which match with Coraline’s age and nature. Towards the end, however, the palettes of the colors switch as Coraline discovers the truth about the Other World.

Figure 3: Coraline interacts with the ghosts of the other children.

Overall, the stop-motion animation and the usage of starkly different colors allow for the viewers to immerse in Coraline’s world and reach out to the character, and also reflects greatly the original nature of Gaiman’s novel.