Henry Selick Films Ranked
3. Wendell & Wild (2022)
Orphaned foster kid Kat (Lyric Ross) is swept up in a battle against an evil corporation and more satanic forces when a pair of bickering demon brothers (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) promise to resurrect her parents in exchange for passage to the world of the living.
For all the faults of its business model, Netflix has done a fair amount to preserve mainstream stop-motion animation, providing a platform to reach the biggest possible audience for Aardman, Guillermo del Toro and Henry Selick, where theatrical distributors might have hesitated. This reach, combined with the risks that Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions are always willing to take, allows Wendell & Wild to be bold and different and weird.
As if working in this medium wasn’t already an extremely drawn-out process, this film was made during COVID and it survived the wildfires that raged through Oregon where the production was based. It is, frankly, a miracle that this turned out as well as it did, if you ignore the out-of-place needle drops that is.
Wendell & Wild, with all its superpowered nuns and resurrection hair cream, is a seriously strange film that won’t gel with everybody. But the extent of the mad imagination on show, with an afterlife aesthetic like an improved version of the carnivalesque world of Monkeybone, and the concerted efforts made to tell this particular story with voices as diverse and unique as possible, has to be applauded.
2. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas Review
Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon), the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, tries to bring Christmas to his spooky locale and eventually takes over from Santa Claus for the holidays… with disastrous results.
The authorship of Selick’s most famous film is often misattributed to its producer Tim Burton, who didn’t have the patience for heading up such a time-consuming enterprise despite coming up with the original story. If Burton is the father of A Nightmare Before Christmas, then Selick brought it bouncing into the world. This is unmistakably a Selick joint; it is unafraid to build an (admittedly dark) family film around a cast of hideous horror characters and has the cheek to commit many an act of sacrilege on Yuletide iconography.
It’s a known fact that kids like to be scared up to a point, and this really is just the right combination of monsters and mischief, of a kind of creepy bedtime story with good morality but plenty of icky imagery and kidnapping and torture of holiday icons.
A perennial favourite at Halloween, Christmas, or both, Danny Elfman’s endlessly catchy songs, arresting images, the vivid characters fleshed out from Burton’s original sketches, and a big old beating heart below the macabre exterior, have ensured this has far transcended its cult classic status. Not bad for a project that originally horrified the Disney shareholders and had them convinced it would never make them any money.
Maybe that was what really connected Selick and Burton; they may have had very different temperaments for this kind of work, but they were both rejected by the House of Mouse for their art style not fitting in with the established wholesome family image of the company and ultimately proved them wrong many times over as avid fans flocked to watch their twisted tales.
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1. Coraline (2009)
Bored teenager Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) escapes her humdrum existence with her over-worked parents in a new house and finds her way to a parallel universe with new and improved versions of her folks, but soon discovers a much more sinister side of this world overseen by her Other Mother (Teri Hatcher).
The tone for this one, and for Laika’s work at large, is set with one of the most disturbing title sequences of all time, in which we follow the Other Mother disassembling sack doll representations of children to create a new one of our titular blue-haired protagonist.
That’s the secret of Coraline‘s genius, that the darkness of its world sneaks up on you just as it does on its lead character. Everything’s all fun and games, roast chicken, pantomimes and mouse circuses to start with, but before long the over-saturated and lively other world has proven itself too good to be true and the cracks begin to show. Even before Other Mother reveals her true spidery form, her cruelty and malice beneath the sweetness and light has risen to the surface; her willingness to give Coraline everything she desires in exchange for her soul is the stuff of nightmares.
Production was so lengthy that Dakota Fanning’s voice had noticeably changed by the end of it, but the extra time, care and attention to detail in every frame of the extensive miniature sets and handmade costumes for every puppet was well worth it in the long run. It’s incredible the nuance and range of emotions that can be imparted on metal armatures covered in silicone by a talented team of animators as well.
This really is Henry Selick’s magnum opus, an entry-level horror for young ‘uns and a coming-of-age movie that has a strange power over their parents as well. For once, Selick got his way and rejected the idea of turning it into a musical to keep things as moody and gothic as possible. The final film has only grown in acclaim over time and has been embraced by more kids who don’t fit in but perhaps should appreciate the freedom they do have next time they bemoan what they don’t.
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Henry Selick is the very definition of committed when it comes to his chosen medium of stop-motion animation, keeping an old-fashioned art form alive and continuing to innovate with every new undertaking. The care and attention he lavishes on every one of his works has made each of his five films to date worth your time, while his usual themes of being an outsider and seeing the world differently have understandably made the biggest impact with like-minded viewers. Hopefully his next project, perhaps the often-mooted, much delayed “The Shadow King”, doesn’t take another decade to manifest.
