Because it has all the Halloween-y spooky trappings but it’s not actually very creepy at all.Īdam: Yeah, it’s odd because if anything it uses those Halloween trappings for a satirical commentary on commercialisation that adults might maybe get but will probably go over kids’ heads anyway.Īdam: Yeah, and when we get onto Boxtrolls that is tonally even odder, I would say. It has this sense of the uncanny, and there’s very little of the uncanny in Paranorman, it’s all weirdly straightforward. Because Coraline, for those who don’t know, finds this little door in her house that leads to another world that looks very similar to her own but everyone has buttons for eyes, and everything is just slightly off. So Coraline, I think is very effectively creepy because it situates this other place within the home. It’s all done in this oddly straightforward way. So these moments of reality shifting, and similarly the final confrontation, which is quite similar to the final confrontation with the other mother in Coraline, in as much as the location explodes into this great white void - that’s all really good, and that’s very effective and those bits were quite thrilling - but there’s not much sense of mystery, really. Ren: It’s made of paper! That’s a reference no-one will get.*Īdam: Yeah, that’s really effective. I mean the animation still looks very good, it’s not as incredible as Coraline, but the moment when Norman’s doing a play at school and he has this vision, and the stage and all the people on it just sort of crinkle up and it turns into a forest, it’s a very cool effect. Coraline makes an incredible use of the medium, it’s a very tactile film in a way that Paranorman isn’t so much. Like, the character designs would have been much the same in CGI. And one of the things that disappointed me about Paranorman is that it didn’t utilise the medium of stop-motion as well as it could have done. So one thing I did like is that Norman has these visions essentially where the material fabric of his world seems to rip apart and this is done with a ripping paper effect. Zombies are traditionally slow and shambling, but these are particularly lacklustre zombies and I think even early on it’s quite obvious that they’re not a major threat, so what is positioned as more of a threat is the idea of the curse itself, and this is scariest when it’s presented in a fairly vague metaphysical way. So the zombie-like figures, the characters who are raised from the dead, are quite laconic at best. I think what’s interesting about it is that the scariness doesn’t really come from the expected sources. That’s essentially the plot.Īdam: I mean, it certainly would have scared me as a kid, but i’ve said previously I was a very sensitive child, so that’s not saying much admittedly. Ren: So he can see and speak to the dead, and it’s the 300th anniversary of a witch’s execution in this town and Norman finds out that the story of the witch cursing her sentencers is true, and they are going to raise from the dead and he needs to stop them. So, the main character is Norman who is an eleven year-old boy who lives in a small Massachusetts town that is part of the witch trials industry.Īdam: And he’s voiced by Kodi Smitt-Mcphee, which is a great name, I just want to say. So it had a lot to live up to going into it, and in my opinion it doesn’t live up to it. Ren: A children’s horror classic that we will undoubtedly talk about at some point. Ren: - Just to get that out of the way right at the start! It’s made by the studio Laika, so it’s a stop-motion animation film and made by the same studio that did Coraline. Ren: Yes, and I suggested that we talk about Paranorman, despite not liking it very much.Īdam: I’m glad we got that out of the way early! Ren: So we’re going to be talking about Paranorman, and to a lesser extent Boxtrolls.Īdam: Yeah, Paranorman is more of a horror film. I will say when we get there in case you would rather not listen to that. And I just wanted to add a quick warning that in the latter half of the episode we do talk about some transmisogynist/transphobic tropes that come up. I’m Ren Wednesday and with my co-host Adam Whybray today we’ll be talking about two films - Paranorman and The Boxtrolls. Ren: Hello, and welcome to ’Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror’ a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books films and tv. Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and his band Etao Shin are at .ukĪrtwork is by Letty Wilson, find her work at /lettydraws If you have any suggestions as to what Adam's 'missed king of the hill connection is', our twitter handle is and you can email us at music is by Maki Yamazaki, find her work at In this episode we discussed 'Paranorman' and 'The Boxtrolls'. Trolls, tropes, and toilet humour in two Laika stop-motion films.
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