Few films have created as many diehard horror fans as the stop-motion classic,Coraline.Directed byHenry Selick, this animated moviefollows a young girl struggling with a recent move, her frustration over a creepy new house, and weird neighbors complicated even further by the portal to another world she soon discovers. It’s a thrilling, scary masterpiece, lauded by countless viewers for its ability to toe the line between whimsical and terrifying as the horrific experiences of our titular heroine, Coraline (Dakota Fanning), are presented in bursts of colorful animation. It’s scary, but not too disturbing, allowing both adult and young audiences to enjoy it without becoming irreparably frightened. However, this was very nearly not the case.
Originally,some of the major creators behindCoralinewanted the film to be live-action, hoping that using real people and sets would not only draw in bigger crowds and save money but grant this adaptation the (in their opinion) format it deserved. This shift would have entailed numerous changes for the plot, both in content and style, but above all else,it could’ve turned the creepily cute film horror lovers remember fondly into something much more disturbing.
Our Eyes Will Always Be On ‘Coraline’
No movie has ever blended the wonder of childhood with the adult terrors of classic horror films quite likeCoraline.Based on a novella byNeil Gaiman,the movie follows Coraline Jones, a blue-haired 11-year-old putting up with busy parents and leaving her friends behind to move into a dingy Oregon apartments apartment building, “The Pink Palace.” Aside from an annoying black cat and strange neighbors, Coraline doesn’t think that there’s anything for her to do in this new setting. That is until she finds a secret door that leads her to a fantastical world, an inverse of her own complete with a lavish apartment building, cooler neighbors, and, to the girl’s shock, alternate versions of her parents. Both of them have buttons for eyes and shower Coraline with the attention and gifts she never receives in the real world, with the “Other Mother” especiallyurging the girl to leave that drab place behind and live in their wonderful world full-time. Coraline learns about a witch who used to live on the land many years ago, one who would lure in young children just like her and do something truly unspeakable to ensure they could never leave her candy-colored world of terror…
‘Coraline’ Director Henry Selick Is Turning Another Neil Gaiman Story Into a Movie
Here’s what we know so far about Selick’s “companion piece” to ‘Coraline.’
The horror ofCoralineis intricate and digestible, a necessity for young horror viewers whose love of fear can quickly become traumatizing.Coralineworks around potentially traumatizing its younger audience by dousing its nonstop terrorwith some of the most beautiful animation ever put to film. Pair that with the resonant storytelling — Coraline’s personality and struggles are ones that many children (and former children) can relate to —makes her the perfect first"Final Girl"for potential scare-lovers to latch onto. This animated movie is a perfect entry point to the medium, allowing both the fear and the beautiful art to bring viewers of all ages in… which makes it so wild that it was almost live-action.
Coraline is Too Scary for the Real World
In an interview with Mercury News,CoralineproducerBill Mechanicstatedthat he’d initially pushed for the film to be made in live-action.The creator claimed that he originally considered stop-motion “passé,” and that he signed onto the project in the hopes of making it live-action as a way of drawing in more viewers. He doesn’t give many details on what this would have changed about the story,but he does explain that they’d made a version that was partially CGIto see how it could look with some more realistic elements thrown in —and the result wasn’t great.Apparently, this realistic version lost the flair of the animated film, reducing the jaw-dropping world that bewitched Coraline in the movie we all know into something that no child would ever actually want to visit, let alone escape into. Add to that, the writer of the original book, Neil Gaiman,said that any version with real people would be nonsense.
While Mechanic may not give many details about what a real version of the story could look like, it’s fair to assume a live-actionCoralinewould be too terrifying for children. Seeing real people with their eyes sewn shut orthe Beldam crawling through a technicolor tunnel,her twisted claws trying desperately to hook themselves into a small child would be pretty horrifying for an adult, let alone a child. Animation is a versatile medium, one that allows any plot to be told to its fullest and gives creators the power to control every aspect of their story. By being animated, Coraline is an eerie, wonderful tale that serves as the perfect initiation into a lifelong love of horror. A live-action version just wouldn’t have the same effect.
Coralineis available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
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