Greg's Oh! The Horror! #1 (Outhouse Edition)
- Written by Greg on Monday, February 16 2009 and posted in Reviews
Well, I've been asked by quite a few folks here to write for the site. The recent one being to produce myreviews that I write for my horror blog and thread onto the front page so decided, sure, why not? So this is for the horror fans and myself as I just have fun watching these things. So for my first "Oh! The Horror!" for Outhouse, I review Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman's masterpiece Coraline.
Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, teams up
with book wizard Neil Gaiman to bring us the magical world of Coraline.
This stop-motion 3D film will simply blow you away. The simple word
"brilliant" comes to when I think back of this movie. Coraline is about
an 11 year old girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who moves into a new
home with her parents who are less than attentive to her. She meets a
strange boy by the name of Wybie and a black cat that seems to pop in
and out whenever it pleases. She also meets her neighbors, Miss
Forcible and Miss Spink, a pair of retired actors with lovely jumpy
dogs and maybe dozens of them dead and stuffed on their walls, and Mr.
Bobinsky, a blue-skinned acrobat who's also a circus ringmaster of
jumping mice. As Coraline gets bored in the new house in which her
parents always being busy never helps, jumping mice begin playing
around in her room late at night which eventually leads her to discover
a door to another world. Another world where her mother is a good cook
and is happy to see her and her father is a chipper pianist who has
helpful hands coming out of the piano and gardener who makes a garden
resemble Coraline. One strange setback: they have buttons for eyes.
Yeesh. At first Coraline is skeptical about this world and goes to
sleep after being treated with delicious food and wakes up back into
her world. Confused but at the same time excited, she later visits the
world again and greets her other parents and this magical world with
open arms. But previously before, she was warned by many that she is in
grave danger. But of course, she isn't going to listen. Where's the fun
in that?
Now I'll admit the story is a little slow at first. But once the story picks up, holy goodness does it
pick up! There comes to a point where Coraline visits the world again
where it's time for her to be a part of it. This leads to the happy and
chipper Other Mother, voiced delightfully by Teri Hatcher, to bring
Coraline her own pair of buttons to sew into her eyes. This is when
everything gets flipped out and even more bizarre than it already was,
especially when Coraline sees that she can't wake up back in her real
world. Now Coraline must battle her Other Mother while trying to find
her way out of this world and at the same time release the souls of
kids who the Other Mother had trapped previously along with her guide,
the black cat voiced by awesome-that-is Keith David. An absolute
joyride is this modern Alice in Wonderland and you will have a blast
watching this. My little sister was asking me to see it when she first
saw the commercial and I was excited myself given that I love "Gaiman
films" (still need to finish reading a lot of his books I started and
never finished!) and I love stop-motion animation more than straight
CGI. There's just something about stop-motion animation that seems a
bit more raw and fascinating than straight CGI. And when you see this
movie you'll be amazed of just how much stop-motion has advanced to get
what we have today for this movie. The visuals were just amazing and
enough to keep you hooked. Besides to magical story is wonderful
eye-candy. This is a movie for everyone and their grandmother. Heck,
even the music was catchy as all heck and kept you happy and joyful
while watching. The song the Other Father played Coraline is still
stuck in my head after two days and I loved the bouncy music that was
played when Coraline visited the other Mr. Bobinsky and his jumping
mice. And once again, Hatcher as the Other Mother was superb. For me
she definitely stole the show and added to the creepiness of this
story. I can definitely see kids being frightened of her but not too
scared that they want to leave the theaters. I think it's great that we
can have such movies like this with so much heart and magic and still
be a horror movie for the whole family. It put a smile on my face when
the movie ended and I took off my 3D glasses with my baby sister and
she said to me with glee, "Now that was a horror movie!"
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About the Author - Greg
Greg DAE is a Brooklyn born film-maker, writer, actor, and horror/comic fiend. He was one of the first writers of The Outhouse and one of the two original Bludnet writers. One day he’ll be an accomplished comic book writer…. Or else.
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