The more I think about when I first saw this, I'm like 95% sure I saw this in theaters with my grandma. I can't even imagine what she thought. I can barely imagine what I thought. This is just a marvelous creative undertaking, and it's pulled off seemingly with ease, even though looking at any particular detail is a consistent reminder of how much painstaking detail was placed into every inch of this film
Aside from the sheer scale of this world (which amounts to a random city block and a homestead in the woods but it all feels so large), it's unbelievably impressive how rapidly this moves without sacrificing anything
Selick sets up everything necessary, and then proceeds to watch the dominoes tumble one by one with perfect precision. The pacing in this is truly otherworldly
I deeply appreciate and adore how charming Coraline is as a film, before becoming deeply unsettling and downright frightening
Coraline as a character is simply perfect. Her charisma and attitude is such a fun trait to see interact with this at first drab world, so the glimpses of her universally understood childhood fears and anxieties ring ever true
The heightened characters in the real world do feel like how a child perceives odd interactions, or how they remember particular people. It's perfect, and rides a very wonderful line between the concept of memories being warped and how we see the world and those around us as both children, and later as adults
I just really love this movie, it's a stone-cold classic (Also, Other Father's song is a 10/10 banger)