Ahh. The feeling of coziness strikes again.
Picture this; a warm cup of hot chocolate in your lap, a warm blanket draped over you, and an overwhelming wave of warmth washing over you. You grab the remote, and a dilemma forms when you see there is nothing good on. After a good amount of time passes, you retreat from your cocoon to search through the family DVDs.
After a while, you notice the scraggly writing of Coraline, hidden underneath. A smile runs onto your face. This is what Fall is all about.
Coraline as a story is extremely unique, even for Neil Gaiman, the author. Most of his stories run within the veins of thrillers and fantasy, even horror, so this whimsical nursery-rhyme-esque tale was a new direction for him.
Henry Selnick had worked with Tim Burton on a project by the name of “The Nightmare before Christmas”, so this sort of drab environment was a familiar yet new prospect for his style of stop-motion animation.
The story follows a reluctant girl moving into an extremely boring new house. After a dark and gloomy couple days, she discovers a small door. After sundown, she wanders through the door to an alternate reality where it seems everything is what she wanted. Better backyard, better neighbors, better friends, better parents. But it seems after a while this “better” universe  is far from it.
The story has a very interesting theme, dolls dominate the film and create this uncanny valley, where anything that happens makes the audience question themselves.
The whole concept of this perfect world where nothing goes wrong is nice, but if it wasn’t genuine, what would it be like to be trapped there?
The book is much more grim than the film, at times leaning into horror. The movie takes a turn from stories of slender men made of rats and ghosts of forgotten children to a focus on atmosphere.
A big part of what makes Henry Selnick’s movies so fun to watch is how meticulously the worlds the characters interact with are made.
So take a look for that DVD, look it up, go to the library. Immerse yourself in a cold, unforgiving, yet nostalgic masterpiece.
At the moment you can find it online on Roku, Netflix, Prime Video, or Vudu.