Wen­dell & Wild

It’s been 13 years since Hen­ry Selick’s eggy, blue-haired young pro­tag­o­nist tun­nelled into an alter­nate dimen­sion of but­ton-eyed kin and man­go milk­shakes in Cora­line – not an atyp­i­cal hia­tus for the direc­tor, who has aver­aged two fea­ture cred­its per decade since the ear­ly 1990s, but an absence cer­tain­ly felt by ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts. Now reme­died by Selick’s lat­est, Wen­dell & Wild, a stop-motion pup­pet endeav­our about two demon broth­ers sum­moned to the land of the liv­ing by an orphaned teenage girl hop­ing to res­ur­rect her parents.

After sur­viv­ing the car acci­dent that left her par­ents drowned, Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross) hasn’t for­giv­en her­self for let­ting out the shriek that sent them fly­ing off an over­pass. We’re intro­duced to her in hand­cuffs, fresh­ly released from juvie and en route to a board­ing school with a cushy new pro­gram for trou­bled youths. Through the van win­dow, Kat observes the grey, derelict remains of her once-cosy home­town, pil­laged and bought out by Klax Korp, a pri­vate prison contractor.

At school, Kat is unspeak­ably cool, with her turquoise locs, eye­brow rings, plat­form boots, and a boom­box peren­ni­al­ly blast­ing Poly Styrene. She feels like a nat­ur­al suc­ces­sor to Cora­line, her oth­er­world­ly excur­sions impelled by a desire for famil­ial con­nec­tion and a detach­ment from the ordi­nary. She’s also con­trast­ed against the prep­py sheen which lac­quers the academy’s var­i­ous cliques, save for Raul (Sam Zelaya), a gawky lon­er spat out of the in-crowd. As Kat set­tles into the school’s bizarre rhythms, she learns she’s a Hell Maid­en – a teenage girl with a direct line to the nether world – and just as quick­ly tries to use her pow­ers to res­ur­rect her parents.

Mean­while, down in hell, demon broth­ers Wen­dell (Kee­gan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jor­dan Peele) are car­ry­ing out a prison sen­tence for trea­son, their days spent plod­ding along their gigan­tic, Satan­ic father’s scalp, fill­ing his every hair plug with mousse, and their nights spent cosied up in his right nos­tril. Demon dad­dy Buf­fa­lo Belz­er is the ring­mas­ter of a car­ni­va­lesque under­world that sub­sists atop his bel­ly, and per­haps the clos­est thing we might have to The Night­mare Before Christ­mas’ Oogie Boo­gie – not near­ly as scary as a walk­ing, talk­ing sac o’ bugs, but a fun enough infer­nal foil. The broth­ers view Kat as a parole tick­et away from their labour, and are sub­se­quent­ly sum­moned to Earth to assist her lofty plan.

This plot is cer­tain­ly chewier than Cora­line, Night­mare, or James and the Giant Peach, all of which are bol­stered by metic­u­lous and lucid world­build­ing (a prac­tice undone by Wen­dell & Wild), rather than real-world appo­si­tion. The film’s pol­i­tics are well-rinsed, ensur­ing the Trumpian prison fetishists are quashed and that impe­ri­al­ist ghosts take a back­seat to the rights of mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties. What’s more, the inclu­sion of an explic­it­ly trans char­ac­ter – whose involve­ment with­in the plot isn’t mere­ly periph­er­al – feels nov­el for the audi­ence Wen­dell & Wild will like­ly reach.

There’s clear­ly a lot at play: guilt, grief, pur­ga­tion, con­for­mi­ty, elec­toral fraud, and the prison indus­tri­al com­plex to cap it all off. What may have been appro­pri­ate­ly lolled out on paper feels dis­tend­ing with­in a 105-minute run­time, where big, salient ideas are brought only to a sim­mer. Selick’s sig­na­ture fan­tas­ti­ca­tion still feels com­fort­ing, and his affec­tion for his snarky pup­pets is plain­ly at hand, though all the demon­ic ted­dies and X‑Ray Spex in the world won’t cloak the ortho­doxy of Wen­dell and Wild’s chief pro­duc­tion house.