Movie Thoughts: Wendell & Wild (2022)

• Released: September 11th, 2022
• Directed by: Henry Selick
• Running time: 1h 45min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A girl summons two demons known as Wendell and Wild to the world of the living, something which has lasting consequences.

My Thoughts

Happy (early?) Halloween, depending on when I'm posting this. I'm writing this review in June, though. Hi, me from the past.

This is one of those movies I intended to check out much earlier, but just never did. I used to not be the biggest stop-motion fan (I like it much more now), but also just the whole thing with this being a kinda Halloween-themed movie didn't speak that much to me. Halloween is not something that's really celebrated where I live, and I've never really understood the hype behind the holiday. But I figured, for my followers who do celebrate it, I might as well watch some Halloweenish movies and review them, even if the usual themes of ghosts and ghouls and vampires and werewolves and such don't appeal that much to me.

And this movie...eh. I wanted to really love it. The animation and design of the characters is absolutely gorgeous, I'll definitely give it that. Stylistically this has to be one of my favorite stop-motion films. The characters can also be quite fun, whether it's the demon brothers themselves or Kat, who is a wonderful lead. I also really appreciate the message of this film.

But the writing is where I have to deduct some points. I do think that there is a good story hiding in here somewhere, but the final execution just didn't really work for me (and, looking at the reviews, a lot of others, too). It just kinda feels like the story throws way too many concepts at the wall and not all of it sticks. It has a lot of subplots and concepts going on at once and just doesn't know how to properly balance them.

But overall I'd still say that this is worth checking out. Even if the writing isn't its strong suit, it still has some great visuals and likable characters.