Do you love Halloween classics like ParaNorman and Corpse Bride? Are you looking for a new animated film to enjoy? Released in 2022, Netflix’s Wendell and Wild is a horror comedy that wrenches the heart while tackling the huge topics of systemic injustice through the school-to-prison pipeline, corruption in religious spaces, and deep personal trauma. Co-produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and directed by Selick, the director of Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, Wendell and Wild is a future cult classic film that’s perfect for Halloween and stop-motion lovers everywhere.
The movie follows orphaned Kat Elliot, played by Lyric Ross, a punk-loving 13-year-old delinquent, transported back to her deteriorating hometown of Rust Bank five years after the death of her parents, which she believes she caused. She is enrolled in Rust Bank’s all-girls Catholic school, where her edgy attitude and classic punk style make her stand out among the other students around her. Kat learns that she is a “Hell Maiden” and able to communicate with demons, when she meets brothers Wendell and Wild, played by the classic comedian duo “Key and Peele,” Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, a group of demons set on using her to pursue their dreams of creating an amusement park for the dead. Meanwhile, the owners of the corrupt private prison company Klaxon “Klax” Korp plot to destroy what’s left of Rust Bank and expand their prisons to the catholic school. With the help of a young artist Raúl Cocolotl, voiced by Sam Zelaya, a nun, and a talking goat, Kat must fight the undead for her city while dealing with her own literal and internal demons.
The movie score was composed by Bruno Coulais, a French composer also known for his work on other movie scores including Coraline, Wolfwalkers, and The Chorus. The soundtrack contains a mix of funky soul and punk rock music, highlighting Afro-punk bands to simultaneously represent Kat’s character and the themes of civil resistance and unrest within the movie. Featuring pieces like “I am a Poser” by X-Ray Spex, and “The Wolf” by The Brat, a Chicano pop-punk band, the music speaks specifically to the experience of POC and their communities in the US and criticizes the hypocrisy of the United States government. Coulais also includes funkier sounds including work by The Ngozi Family, and Fishbone, one of the first “Afro-punk” rock bands in the 80’s, whose music contains a mix of sounds ranging from ska, punk, and metal, to funk, reggae, and soul. The song selected was “Ma and Pa,” and though the song is about a child struggling due to their parents’ divorce, it was chosen to bridge the dissimilarities between Kat’s and her parents’ tastes and styles. In addition, the song, seemingly unintentionally, plays the role of symbolizing healing generational trauma by connecting Kat’s trials to her parents’ history of losing the hard work they put into the city of Rust Bank.
The movie was animated using stop motion and clay characters, but Selick did not like how smooth and indistinguishable the style had become compared to computer animation. In order to “bring back the original charm” of stop-motion, according to Selick in an interview for Netflix, he intentionally left flaws on screen. This included things like keeping in seamlines where removable faces met the body and using fewer frames in some of the scenes. The animators also used 2D cutouts made of tin and silicone, as well as silhouette animation to create horrifying scenes, inspired by the animation used in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The animators used shades of purples, blues, and greys to create a creepy, undead look to characters and the setting, and bright contrasting greens, fitting the typical Halloween vibe. As usual with stop motion, the animators worked hard to make sure every shot was detailed and went together fluidly. One notable sequence was when Kat tore apart her skirt and recreated her school uniform to fit her punk style, a 45-step process that took five days to complete, according to the Lead Costumer Nadine Patterson.
The characters were designed by Argentinian Illustrator Pablo Lobato, who worked to make sure every character shared similarities with the actor who voiced them. Paying homage to its style inspiration Coraline, Selick uses similar shots like the image of a doll-like body floating behind swirling vortexes of color, the well-known “very peculiar hand” shape holding it between the fingers, and the use of dreams to represent the connections between the realms of the living and the dead. The movie contains disgusting close-ups of rotting corpses, some filled with worms, and unexpected brutal murders, embodying all the shock and horror that viewers of similar stop-motion films love.
The diversity of the cast and characters was done intentionally, and Windell and Wild features an almost entirely non-white cast. Fans of the movie were excited to see dark-skinned, visibly Native, and LGBTQ+ characters. According to Erin Williams, a Staff Writer for Amherst Student, Wendell and Wild “wonderfully” makes the “first step” in diversifying stop-motion.
In the past, directors like the famous Tim Burton have refused to include non-white people, specifically Black people, in animations because of the idea that darker tones can’t fit the “aesthetic” of the films, and that including them would be “forced representation.”
Says Williams, “The claim that deathly features only apply to white people doesn’t make sense. After all, everyone experiences death.”
Williams points out also that Raúl is the first transgender character to appear in stop-motion animation, and the team makes history while making it look effortless.
“It’s a reassuring feeling to know that a new generation of kids will sit down to watch this movie on Halloween and find characters to resonate with, regardless of race and gender identity.”
The movie features Tantoo Cardinal as Ms. Hunter, Angela Basset as Sister Helley, James Hong as Father Bets, Tamara Smarts as Sioban Klaxon, and Maxine Peake and David Harewood as the antagonists, Irmegard and Lane Klaxon. Ving Rhames voiced Wendell and Wild’s father, Buffalo Belzer, Ruler of the Underworld. Kat’s parents Dellroy and Wilma Elliot were played by Gary Gatewood and Gabrielle Dennis. Other characters include janitor/demon hunter Manberg voiced by Igal Naor, Ramona Young as Sweetie, and Caroline Crawford as Cassandra.
According to Selick in a Netflix interview, he and Peele had never seen Afro-punk movement representation in “any animated film.”
“There’s something about Kat that embodies something deep within myself,” said Peele. “If little Jordan could’ve seen this Afro-punk character in a movie like this, it would have changed my life early on.”
The screenplay for Wendell and Wild was co-written by Selick and Peele, based on Selick’s unreleased book of the same title. It is Selick’s first film since the production of Coraline, released in February of 2009. The movie premiered first on September 11, 2022, at the 57th Toronto International Film Festival, then in theatres on October 21 of the same year. It now streams on Netflix and is rated PG-13.