"Wildwood" is the Modern Disney Classic Disney Didn't Make

In a world filled with generative AI (I’m not calling it SI; my president can jail me for that if he wants to), a movie like Wildwood feels like a small miracle. The film is directed by Travis Knight, who once wanted to be a rapper but ended up being a filmmaker (I’m not making this up: he was Chilly Tee and his album was Get Off. You can thank me later). The reason he was able to switch from one unrealistic career to another is because his father is Phil Knight, the billionaire who founded Nike. With his considerable fortune not doing much, Papa Knight basically bought his son an animation studio, renamed it Laika, and essentially told him he could do whatever he wanted. Normally, this is the sort of nepotism that drives people crazy, because it's akin to having a famous parent buy you a career (in this case, two).

While I get the sentiment, I have to admit that Knight turned Laika into an artistic powerhouse that reminds me a lot of when Don Bluth walked away from Disney in the '80s. Bluth felt Disney was not producing the kind of films that made the studio special during Walt’s lifetime, and left to make classics like An American Tail and The Land Before Time. While Knight may not have staged an animation revolt (sort of… it's complicated), his studio has created some modern animated classics like Coraline, ParaNorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings. While I’m sure the Knights would love for these movies to make more money, they currently seem more interested in making great art first. That may be why, from the moment I sat down and the lights dimmed, I had an instant feeling that I was watching something special.

From the first frame of the dark world, which begins with a dark tragedy only to introduce our protagonist as a relatable teenager, the movie was getting off on the right foot in an unusually strong way. It follows Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a young teenager who lives in Oregon and finds her life to be uneventful and frustrating, as her parents are constantly telling her to stay at home with her baby brother and not take him outside. Prue doesn’t take their warnings seriously and takes him out for a stroll the moment they are gone. Unfortunately, her parents may have had a point, as a bunch of crows capture her little brother and bring him into a forest that people have been unable to enter for years.

Because… sure, that’s the sort of thing I can see happening in Oregon. For reasons that are best explained in the movie, Prue (along with her friend Curtis, played by a young Jacob Tremblay… showing just how long it takes to make these movies) is able to enter the forest and discover another world where rats talk, owls and crows are at war, and an evil witch is willing to do anything (and kill anyone) to bring her deceased son back to life. And once we enter that world, the movie goes from being interesting to becoming magical. Animated with stop-motion animation, the world of Wildwood is not only visually stunning; it is creative in ways so many movies just aren’t these days.

At first, you are amazed at the sheer artistry of the film, only to eventually become so captivated by what is happening that you keep forgetting how difficult all of this is to make. A battle sequence near the end of the film was so mind-blowing it reminded me of when I first saw the stampede scene in The Lion King and the mountain battle in Mulan—sequences that essentially became out-of-body experiences. To explain how rare this feeling is, eleven years ago I selected Inside Out as my choice for the best film of the year, and that movie did not have a sequence that made me sit up in my seat and think, “How the hell did they do that?!”

Of course, spectacle can only go so far, yet the movie earns the sequence because we do love the characters; the antagonist is cruel yet tragic, and the world feels like it is living and breathing despite being created with literal puppets. While Knight may have directed a (pretty good) toy commercial adaptation of Masters of the Universe earlier this year, Wildwood shows the director working on a whole different level, and I’m feeling like he is our modern-day Don Bluth: making the classic Disney animation that, for one reason or another, Disney currently isn’t making themselves. Despite the PG-13 rating (and the violence makes it earned, I have to stress), it was wonderful to watch an animated movie that was so inspiring that I sense it will inspire kids who watch it to become the new generation of animators. Hopefully, the box office gods will be kind here. Actually, that’s one advantage of playing with daddy’s money: the box office gods are a non-issue in your world.