Review: Wendell & Wild (Henry Selick, 2022)

FIg. 1 - Wendell & Wild (Henry Selick, 2022).

Wendell & Wild, directed by stop-motion veteran Henry Selick and co-written and co-produced by horror master Jordan Peele, marks the former’s return to his signature medium and the latter’s first foray into animation filmmaking (Fig. 1). To call this a highly-anticipated collaboration would be an understatement. Since Netflix first announced the film, stop-motion fans, myself included, have been dying to know how this exciting team up would play out. Would these two creators’ distinctive styles mesh well? Will Peele’s brand of socially conscious horror add new layers to Selick’s dark fantasy phantasmagorias? Can Selick recapture the sinister magic of Coraline (2009), giving us another children’s horror classic? The answer to all these questions is…kind of.

Despite what its title might suggest, Wendell & Wild is actually about Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross), a tough, rebellious teen tormented by guilt about her perceived role in a tragic accident that changed her life (Fig. 2). A survivor of the juvenile justice system, Kat is taken in by the Rust Bank Catholic School for Girls, where she discovers – with the help of a delightfully spooky teddy bear and a fearless nun (Sister Helley, voiced by Angela Bassett) – that she holds the power to summon demons to the Land of the Living. Cue Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele), two chaotic demon brothers who dream of building their own amusement park and will do anything to make it happen -- including striking a deal with Kat that ends up unleashing undead mayhem into her community. But there is an even greater evil lurking in the shadows. Kat and her allies uncover a corporate conspiracy aiming to ensure, by all means necessary (murder and arson included), the construction of a large private prison in Rust Bank despite the town inhabitants’ resistance.

Fig. 2 - Kat’s signature style is Afropunk rebellion incarnate.

If this sounds like a lot, rest assured that it is, indeed, too much. While Netflix apparently desired to produce an indictment of the American prison industrial complex that doubles as a fun Halloween comedy-fantasy-horror adventure, this is an ambitious task that this film attacks with more gusto than finesse. In attempting to create a coherent mixture of children’s horror, social justice commentary, Key & Peele-style comedy, and ruminations on grief and guilt, Wendell & Wild stretches its screenplay a bit too thin. As a result, it struggles to give all of these thematic threads the opportunity to unfurl organically and at a comfortable pace, shortchanging some of them along the way.

Given Peele and Selick’s impressive track record in horror and dark fantasy, and their shared love for the stop-motion medium, the two directors’ creative chemistry should have been off the charts. Sadly, it’s mostly off. Wendell & Wild feels like two extremely promising films mashed into a less impressive whole. There is no sign of the subtle touches that elevated Get Out’s approach to social commentary. Instead, here, the message is loud and clear and, unfortunately, hammered home repeatedly. Perhaps this oversimplification was seen as a necessity in a film marketed as family-friendly – a move that weakens the story’s social justice position while harming its entertainment value. The screenplay struggles to unite disparate storylines that haven’t been given sufficient room to breathe despite the relatively generous 105-minute runtime. Meanwhile, Selick’s deliciously sinister hallucinations sometimes feel tamer than usual. A climactic clash of wills involving the undead, heavy machinery, and a rousing display of community resistance should feel anything but boring, and yet I found myself looking at my watch rather than the screen.

Despite its story and pacing issues, however, Wendell & Wild is still worth a watch. Messy execution aside, the film’s commitment to inclusivity has given contemporary mainstream stop motion a dynamic duo of compelling characters from communities historically underrepresented in animation and horror alike. In today’s entertainment climate, the impact of seeing Kat, a brilliant Black girl, and Raúl, a resourceful trans Latino boy, saving the day together is impossible to overstate, especially for marginalized kids (and adults). Jordan Peele, who has repeatedly spoken about producing this film “so that kids like himself could see themselves reflected on screen,” pushes beyond the representational status quo in ways that elevate the film into a new benchmark for diversity in animation.  

Fig. 3 - Raúl and Kat, Halloween heroes.

In this vein, Kat’s striking Afropunk-inspired design is an iconic moment in mainstream stop-motion history. With her spectacular green Afro puffs, combat boots, safety-pin skirt, and enormous boombox, she embodies a powerful mixture of youthful rebellion and Black Girl Magic. She is not merely a counter-culture cliché, however. The film is careful to give the character depth, emphasizing the resourceful mind, sensitivity, and capacity for emotional growth hiding behind her tough exterior. Her love for her parents and her friendship with Raúl, a classmate who, like her, does not quite fit in at their Catholic girls’ school, are the film’s emotional focal points. Raúl (voiced by trans actor Sam Zelaya) is a skilled artist, a perceptive and empathetic friend, and a brave defender of their community. Sporting a stylish asymmetrical cut, trendy piercings, and a smart tie, he is comfortable in his identity which, importantly, the film treats as a simple fact rather than a point of discussion (Fig. 3). Side by side, the two kids offer a glimpse at a potential future for children’s entertainment that is as exciting as it is overdue. They offer a model for filmmaking in which representation matters not simply as a Hollywood slogan, but as an organic aspect of worldbuilding.

Unfortunately, not all of Wendell & Wild’s character designs are equally successful or inspired. For instance, Kat and Raúl’s classmate Siobhan is inexplicably, but unmistakably modelled after rap star Nicki Minaj, complete with the artist’s signature blonde wig with severe bangs and striking blue contacts. While Siobhan’s derivative look feels arbitrary, the decision to give one of the evil corporate leaders a striking resemblance to a certain former US President is downright lazy. The film’s most questionable creative choice has to do with its titular characters, designed by Argentinian artist Pablo Lobato to closely evoke the well-known duo voicing them (Fig. 4). Wild’s resemblance to Jordan Peele is extremely distracting in particular, and follows an irritating and persistent Hollywood trend of treating animated characters as little more than avatars for famous voices. Watching Peele-as-cartoon-demon serves as a constant reminder that this film walks a fine line between a labor of love and a vanity project, and whenever it crosses over into the latter, it does so to its own detriment. On that note, the Key & Peele dynamic recreated here by the two voice actors is so familiar that Wendell & Wild occasionally sounds like a whacky Halloween special of the show, rather than an unrelated stand-alone project. While the Key/Peele collaboration might have seemed like an obvious choice, it ends up accidentally stealing some of the film’s thunder.

Fig. 4 - Key & Peele, animated.

With the exception of the aforementioned lackluster climax, Wendell & Wild’s art direction and animation are imaginative and well crafted, if not quite as memorable as Selick’s earlier work. In a return to Coraline’s visual dichotomy, the Land of the Living is desaturated and gloomy, while the Underworld bursts with striking colors and bizarre structures. Kat’s hometown is a picture-perfect Rust Belt town past its prime, complete with dilapidated store fronts, overgrown front yards, and crumbling, blighted structures. Covered in snow and ice so finely textured one can almost feel the cold creeping in, the Land of the Living initially seems as hostile to the viewer as it does to Kat. The puppets are top notch, too. Attention to detail shines through in every facet of their construction, right down to impossibly small elements such as the tiny clumps of unevenly applied nail polish on Kat’s fingers. As is typical of Selick production, simply watching his characters move is a rare pleasure worth the price of admissions. Fans of the stop-motion medium should stay through the credits, as they showcase fascinating behind-the-scenes production footage in an echo of studio LAIKA’s well-known tradition.

The film’s score is notable, too, for its ambitious mixture of punk anthems and lyrical melodies courtesy of returning Selick collaborator Bruno Coulais. The punk and Afropunk songs contribute to the bold, rebellious streak of the film, even if some of them end up dominating their respective scenes a bit too much. In particular, Kat and her father’s shared love of Black punk pioneers Fishbone adds an evocative sonic dimension to their bond. Coulais is in top form, too, and his compositions elevate the the film’s quieter, more introspective moments. However, the contrast between his music and the wilder energy of the punk beats does come off as cacophonous at times.

Ultimately, Selick’s return to the world of stop-motion falls short of recapturing the haunting dark fantasy imagination of Coraline and the exuberantly extravagant gothic joy of The Nightmare before Christmas, whose status as the stop-motion Halloween classic remains unchallenged. Even though this is clearly intended to be a family film, the overburdened screenplay might fail to hold the attention of younger viewers, while the heavy-handedness of the political messaging might be a downside for adult audiences. Moreover, the Netflix branding makes it hard to forget that Wendell & Wild’s anti-corporate message is undermined by the film’s own production and distribution context. Nevertheless, there is plenty to celebrate about this imperfect feature, particularly its attention to inclusivity and the wonderful new Halloween heroes it inducts into the seasonal canon. If only they were given a polished adventure worthy of their spirit.

Wendell & Wild releases on US Netflix on October 28.

**Article published: October 28, 2022** 

Biography

Mihaela Mihailova is Assistant Professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. She is the editor of Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio LAIKA’s Stop-Motion Witchcraft (Bloomsbury, 2021). She has published in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, [in]Transition, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Feminist Media Studies, animation: an interdisciplinary journal, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Flow, and Kino Kultura. She has also contributed chapters to Animating Film Theory (with John MacKay), Animated Landscapes: History, Form, and Function, The Animation Studies Reader, and Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema. Dr. Mihailova is the co-editor of Animation Studies (https://journal.animationstudies.org/) and currently serves as Secretary of the Society for Animation Studies.