‘Wendell & Wild’: Toronto Review

Dir: Henry Selick. US. 2022. 105 mins.

Animator Henry Selick’s first feature in 13 years is a story about loss and second chances, operating in a more adult register than most so-called children’s entertainment. As would be expected from the director of Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, Wendell & Wild offers plenty of spooky delights alongside the reliable handmade pleasures of stop-motion. But this tale of a girl mourning the death of her parents and coping with newfound powers proves to be more of a technical marvel than a narrative one, resulting in a modest disappointment with its fair share of memorable moments.

One can admire Wendell & Wild’s ambitions while wishing that its myriad narrative strands were more streamlined

After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, Wendell & Wild makes its way to Netflix, where it will start streaming on October 28, just in time for Hallowe’en. Selick’s fans are sure to tune in, as might those who miss the hit sketch show Key & Peele: Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, respectively, voice the title characters, with Peele also producing and serving as the script’s co-writer.

Moody outcast teen Kat (voiced by Lyric Ross) has spent several years getting in and out of trouble after the death of her parents, who perished during a car accident while she was in the backseat. (Kat blames herself: if she hadn’t distracted her father when he was driving, maybe the crash would never have happened.) Now living in a Catholic girls’ school, she notices she’s developed the ability to see events before they occur — even stranger, she’s visited by two demons, brothers Wendell (Key) and Wild (Peele), who reside in a Hell-like space called the Scream Faire and inform her that they can help bring her parents back to life thanks to a magic cream.

Although Wendell & Wild’s stop-motion incorporates cutting-edge CG technology, there’s still a sense of the fragile and imperfect in the animation that gives the characters’ movements a touching vibrancy. Selick, who cowrote the screenplay, has often demonstrated an affinity for wedding dark fantasy with stop-motion, honing in on the ways in which the format replicates the delicate, otherworldly quality of folktales and nightmares. But he also makes room for playfulness, which is especially true in Wendell & Wild, where the demons and other weird spirits are often comical and foolish.

Ross is quite touching as the punk-rock Kat, who lives with the guilt of her parents’ death and assumes that anyone who comes into her orbit will suffer a similar fate. As a result, she shuts herself off from people, but over the course of the film she’ll finally discover the importance of embracing friendships — even if they’re with the ostensibly mean girls at that Catholic school. Meanwhile, Peele and Kay easily fall back into their comfortable back-and-forth routine as these silly demons who want to escape the ghastly Scream Faire and enter the Land of the Living, where they hope to realise their adorable dream of building a theme park. 

Although the film’s different realms are all imaginatively designed — as are the looks of the characters themselves — Wendell & Wild gets a little bogged down explaining the logistics of how these worlds work. (Even the backstory regarding Kat’s powers is overly complicated.) Additionally, Kat’s community of Rust Bank is facing a critical vote about whether to approve the building of a large prison, an enterprise backed by an evil conglomerate, Klax Korp — a subplot that pulls focus from Kat’s far more moving personal quest. Still, this is that rare children’s film to talk about the immorality of America’s prison system, a thematic seriousness in keeping with Selick’s insistence on tackling intense subject matters, whether it’s death or economic inequality. One can admire Wendell & Wild’s ambitions — near the end, the picture even speaks out against greedy corporations — while wishing that its myriad narrative strands were more streamlined.

That magic cream that Wendell and Wild discover can raise the dead will become a crucial plot engine, forcing Kat to face something perhaps even more harrowing than losing her parents — the possibility of them returning to her life. Selick doesn’t offer easy emotional shortcuts, trusting that younger viewers can handle such a conversation if it’s presented thoughtfully. At the same time, though, Wendell & Wild offers the sort of dull third-act spectacle that’s commonplace in animated films. Its resolution is the only moment in which Selick’s brand of endearing strangeness seems to give way to more mainstream considerations. Wendell & Wild is uneven and a little unfocused, but its feverish oddity can only have been crafted by him.