IndieWire Calls 'Wildwood' an Antidote to Animation's Worst Trends — and Still Lost
IndieWire's critic calls Laika's 'Wildwood' the antidote to all of the worst trends in mainstream animation, then says it gets lost somewhere in the wilderness between reality and imagination. Both halves of that verdict do work: the first measures the film against its neighbours, the second against itself. Refusing a genre's worst habits and holding a movie together are different achievements. A film can be a corrective in spirit and still not settle on which register it is living in — the wilderness there sounds less like a location than a diagnosis.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Antidote status is worth something on its own. When the surrounding films keep making the same moves, resisting them is a real choice, and drifting a little doesn't take it back.
Only if you assume the film knows what it's doing. Being caught between two modes isn't a bold refusal; it can just as easily be a movie that never decided what it was.