Directed By Travis Knight

Starring – Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan

The Plot – A desperate girl’s (Lee) quest to save her kidnapped baby brother unfolds into a spectacular, high-stakes adventure through a forbidden forest full of enchanted creatures, endearing allies, and formidable adversaries, where an entire hidden realm hangs in the balance between its wildlife and a grieving sorceress with her irresponsible instincts.

Rated PG-13 for strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and adult language.

WILDWOOD | Official Trailer (2026)

POSITIVES

Once in a generation, a film comes along that profoundly pushes the artistic limits of modern animation, complete with visually astonishing artistry and maturely thought-provoking material that speaks directly at its youthful audience without degrading their intelligence, and considering Laika Studios have previously carved out a reputation for unorthodox productions that take ambitious chances with its projects, it comes as no surprise that ‘Wildwood’ is their single grandest masterpiece to date, balancing intimate emotional stakes with a massively grand-scale spectacle that helps cement its place atop the frontrunner of this year’s Best Animated Feature category. As a result of this gushing preface, it feels sacrilegious to not discuss the animation first and foremost, as an astonishing sixteen years of production has been spent meticulously crafting the kind of hand-made imagery that is not only hypnotically transfixing to look at and adore, but also highly remarkable for how seamlessly Knight and his hundreds of production members bring this world to life with the kind of fluidity in motions, cleverly creative transitional edits, expressions, lighting, and compositions in every single frame that could easily be hung in a museum for patrons to soak in the three-dimensional extensiveness of this fantastically whimsical world brought to life before our very eyes. As much as we hear it constantly in this profession, Wildwood the setting feels like a character of its own among this assortment of colorfully radiant species and confrontational personalities alike, offering a gushing love-letter to the impassable wilderness and enchanted treacherous forests of the Pacific Northwest, that functions as a politically divided land of wonder and secrecy, where nature-centric magic dictates this transformative path of life. As an example of the remarkability that goes into effortlessly enacted imagery before our very eyes, the production molded 728 miniature trees, 142,030 individual 3D-printed replacement faces across 2,776 shots, and 715 miles of brass wire over a thousand days of production, in order to make the forest feel like a fully realized inhabitable kind of place that achieves such a rich sense of atmospheric immersion for interpretable audiences, where the incredibly intricate web of forest factions, talking animals, and magical mischief subscribes this creative elasticity to Chris Butler’s sentimentally stirring screenplay, surmising the rare kind of distinguished setting that I didn’t want to leave, even after over two hours spent within its staggeringly sweeping scope that included an epic climax battle sequence that rivals The Lord of the Rings in scale and immediacy. As great as the animation undeniably is, the aforementioned script from Butler truly gives it wings, where some darkly tragic and complex emotional outpourings make this the rare example of a kids movie that isn’t afraid of spawning some eye-opening conversations among its impressionable audience, allowing the film to take full advantage of every square inch of its PG-13 rating, without any semblance of crudeness to its creativity. Transformative grief and the inability to let go, sacrifice versus ambition, and the cold cost of ideology and war are just a few of noteworthy exploration points that this movie pursues with the kind of firm persistence that plants them foundationally to the growth of its characters, where some of its triumphant highs and tumultuous lows are prioritized as the crucial milestones of growing up, often before they even realize it, and between this and one of the better orchestrated antagonist arcs that I have seen in sometime, where Mulligan’s Alexandra is molded as a result of her character’s own inability to healthily grieve, the script’s fearlessness is among its most adoring aspects, offering up a refreshingly edgier brand of content that bakes heart and empathy into soul food that goes down smoothly. On top of endlessly effortful animation schemes and quality writing, the dependable direction from Travis Knight’s overseeing of the movie’s massive immensity keeps a firm grasp over the integrity of the material in ways that naturally elicit the kind of emotional versatility derived from so many honest interactions, specifically those moments of levity with carefully calculating humor that keep from compromising the integrity of the movie’s dramatic muscle. In another movie of lesser quality, these moments would stretch and stand out so egregiously that they would saturate the stakes and sentiment from what’s ultimately transpiring, however Knight underscores the consistency of their impacts in ways that never override the urgency or importance of Prue’s objective rescue, instead utilizing them within the contextual bewilderment of Prue’s fish-out-of-water adapting to this surreal world of magic and mischief, and though they’re enacted with a level of underlining emphasis that feels like an afterthought to the transpiring of any scene or sequence, they’re still able to elicit more than a few streaks of memorable influence to the material, allowing enough decompressing levity for adolescents who may veer closer to uncomfortable from the very thematic impulses that cut like a knife. If this wasn’t enough, the film is blessed with an extensively decorated ensemble without a single glaring detractive performance among them, where everyone from Mahershala Ali, to Jake Johnson, to Angela Basset are handing in vocally contortive work that obscures their discerning familiarity of their tones, all the while implementing some digestibly satisfying heart to the integrity of their soulfully sincere characters. This is even the case for Awkwafina, whose name typically makes me cringe in animated castings, but somehow here is measured with enough naturality in her boisterous vocal range to keep from feeling distracting to the moments that include her, in turn cementing another remarkable directorial accolade for Knight, for his ability to bring out the best sides of the comedian-turned-actress. As for the most memorable performances among the pack, it’s Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Carey Mulligan who standout with razor sharp precision among their conflicted characters, with the former perfectly encompassing the angst and hyper-independence of a headstrong teenager while balancing the character with the necessary kind of charm, naivete and pathos that makes her an engaging source to drive the emotional core of the movie, and the latter delivering devilishly on a scrumptiously powerful and imposingly wicked turn of her own, with an underlining layer of profound tragedy and grief that oddly feels relatable, even with the character’s incapability to act empathetically. Lastly, the sweeping love and majestic ingenuity that composer Dario Marianelli injects to these sequences is nothing short of vigorously versatile, with his folk string arrangements and percussive instrumentals seamlessly balancing the grand sweeping scale of the film’s epic battles with the intimately introspective side of the script’s emotional core. Because no two themes of Marianelli’s collective work ever feels derivatively interchangeable, it allows the score to elevate and expand with the dexterity of the material, allowing for a more experimentally eclectic side of Dario than we’re typically used to hearing from him, and while its influence is easy to overlook within the clutches of a collectively compelling engagement that soars simultaneously as one collective vision that fires on all cylinders behind the scenes, individually measured it’s some of Marianelli’s most commanding compositions to date, taking the audience through an emotional journey that lingers consciously with imaginative exuberance.

NEGATIVES

Very little about ‘Wildwood’ detractively is worth raising a furious fuss about, however the indulging emphasis on expansive world-building does occasionally feel like it takes away from fleshing out an abundance of its supporting characters to this 127-minute runtime, specifically Ali’s Bandit King, who for most of the movie’s first half feels like a throwaway character before evolving into a primary conspirator with Prue during the second half, or even Tantoo Cardinal’s Iphigenia, who guides the onslaught of allegiances against Alexandra during the movie’s climax, with very little uncovered knowledge of her background in this mystical land. Because the aforementioned performances are constantly on-point, it helps override some of the glaring inconsistencies with characterization, but fails to muster the intentional magnitude of the emotional undertow rendered during sequences involving them, and considering the script is bouncing so frequently between various species and intersectional landscapes within Wildwood, it doesn’t always effectively flesh out those who are involved with Alexandra’s dark and tortured history, requiring us to rely even heavier than expected on masterful performances that help not only fill the expectational gap of what’s not included, but also to bring these characters to life with any semblance of compelling charisma. Beyond this, my only other incremental critique with the film and its realized material was in the approachability of the protagonist, which admittedly took slightly longer than expected to empathize accordingly with, as a result of her confrontational personality during the opening act feeling confrontational to everyone and everything surrounding her. While this isn’t necessarily a problem if executed accordingly, as introverted protagonists have made for some of the most complex character arcs in live action and animated form respectively, over the last twenty years, however Prue’s too-cool-for-school kind of damning demeanor requires a bit more time and experience than expected from Laika protagonists of past films, in order to give her the necessary approachability to invest empathetically in the projected plight of the character, and while it does eventually materialize during a second act that fleshes out more of the sincere family dynamic that I wish played more of an influential hand to the Prue’s own guided direction, it isn’t such a resounding success during the movie’s opening act, where I found much more vested intrigue in the complex tenderness of Alexandra’s defining grief, or the awestruck innocence of Curtis’ eagerly adventuristic nerdery rather than the irritated Prue.

OVERALL
‘Wildwood’ is a visually astonishing and emotionally devastating fantasy epic that not only breathes new life into the familiarity of otherworldly odysseys before it, but also renders Laika Studios’ most ambitiously realized project to date, with more than sixteen years of creative effort spent towards bringing this intoxicatingly irresistible world of nature and make-believe to life with vividness and vitality. Elevated by an extensive ensemble of hard-hitting heavyweights, as well as meticulously hand-crafted detail in every motion, expression, or breathtaking landscape, the film is immersive escapism at the artform’s grandest scope and scale, rendering a sentimentally sweeping adventure that simultaneously reinforces the beauty of life with the debilitating devastation of grief.

My Grade: 9.2 or A