Back thirteen years after his first film and following a well-documented divorce from Pixar, Coraline’s Henry Selick has been sorely missed. Now he is back and has teamed up with Jordan Peele for one of the most charming and chilling animations of recent times. It isn’t enough to save Wendell & Wild from its noticeable narrative weaknesses, but it does confirm some excellent news: Selick is back, and his work is as wonderful as ever.
Following a spell in a juvenile prison, orphan Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross) is sent to live in an all-girls Catholic school. Her sense of independence and punk rock aesthetic grinds more than a few gears with the resident nuns and she is reluctant to make any new friends. All she wants are her parents back – and when she is visited by underworld demons Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Peele), she gets an opportunity to make the impossible happen. But the pair end up making new deals that put them at odds with Kat, who in turns gives the brothers a bit more than they bargained for.
Selick’s signature style is all over Wendell & Wild, albeit with a less gentle, less mystical feel than in Coraline. Here, dark, angular shapes and shadows dominate, yet, thanks largely to Kat, the film is also full of colour. It is as if it borrows from the German Expressionist tradition, except with an even greater palette to draw from that allows him to create a world that is as imposing as it is striking. At times, it feels like an entirely different dimension, with its own laws and principles of being, a place where anything goes, and gruesome fun is the name of the game. Scenes involving Buffalo Belzer (an underused but magnificent Ving Rhames), in particular, harvest the darkest fruits of Selick’s mind, rivalling even the playful gothic aesthetic of The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Halloween Town.
With Peele in his corner as a producer and co-writer, Wendell & Wild is filled with socio-political commentary. The prison system, rehabilitation programmes for young offenders, and capitalist exploitation of ‘forgotten’ towns all come under scrutiny. These are the kinds of scathing undertones that Peele is renowned for exploring, and yet here they are also the basis for Wendell & Wild’s biggest issue – the story. Selick’s films thrive on intimacy, be it the tender love between Jack and Sally or the complex, fixating dynamic between young Coraline and her mother/other mother. Wendell & Wild sadly feels overstuffed; with so much subtext and several narrative arcs all crammed into what is meant to be one teenage girl’s journey of self-discovery and grief, too much ends up feeling unexplored and unappreciated. Nowhere is this more noticeable than the ending, which hastily closes off all three main storylines in a manner that lacks the inventiveness of the rest of the film. Kat’s classmate Raúl (Sam Zelaya), a transgender boy who attempts to befriend Kat early on, also suffers from the overfilled story. By the end, he is little more than another cog in the machine to help the story eventually reach its finale.
Kat however, and a handful of other leading characters, save the day. Ross brings attitude, vulnerability and emotion to Kat, whose personal journey is the heart of the film and the base of its strongest moments (a tense confrontation with her past in a stone chamber being one of them, a moving and cheerily grotesque sequence). Wendell and Wild too are a delight, as if The Key & Peele Show had found new life in the underworld. Amusingly configured to look like their actors, both characters are full of wicked humour and have an irresistible chemistry. It’s the same kind of entertainment offered by Key and Peele’s turns in Toy Story 4, but here it feels like they are having even more fun. Angela Bassett and James Hong top off what is an eye-watering cast, all of whom bring electrifying vibrancy to their roles.
Flawed it is, but Wendell & Wild is tonic for the soul of those who love watching stop-motion at its very best. A warming story of outsiders, identity and politics is wrapped up as a creepy but PG-friendly horror. And welcome back to feature filmmaking Henry Selick – you have been gone far too long.
Wendell & Wild is streaming now on Netflix.