The Only Film Dakota Fanning was Good In

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 2014)

Coraline is the warped, horrific yet beautiful story of a preteen girl taking on a soul-stealing entity known as the Beldam, which is residing within an alternate version of her new neighborhood. Coraline Joes, former Michigan resident, has moved into a rundown housing complex with her dull and at times neglectful parents. She immediately hates the place; her only joy comes from planning on planting a nice garden in the yard. She meets a strange geek dressed in a trench coat named Wybie (somehow he also got a motorcycle, no idea how at his age). She is creeped out by him and spends much of the film avoiding him.
Coraline starts having strange dreams at night about a surreal, alternate world where everything is seemingly perfect. Her parents in this new world are joyful and adventurous, Wybie is more of a shy mute than a nerdy loser... the one thing she notes that is rather odd is that in this world, everybody has buttons for eyes. Meanwhile, in reality, she has a boring school, uniforms included, to look forward to. Her new neighbors are a pair of aging actresses, both rather senile, and an eccentric former Chernobyl liquidator named Bobinsky. One day she decides to visit the alternate world where she is happier, and is told she can live there forever, on one condition... she has to have her eyes replaced with buttons. At this point the film takes a definite turn for the freaky, when Coraline's parents go missing, she meets a trio of kidnapped ghost children, and the alternate version of Wybie is murdered by the Beldam.
One of the great things in Coraline is the immense amount of subtle details added in. The reason I knew Bobinsky was a Chernobyl liquidator was by the medal he is shown wearing, those medals were given out to the firefighters who went into the burning nuclear reactor, many of them getting sad and scary effects from the radiation in real-life. It was mentioned in the novel as well, so I find it very interesting that the animators who designed the character remembered that detail.
Rather than Coraline being a British girl with longer brown hair as in the novel and comic book adaptation, in this movie she is American, and has shorter, blue-dyed hair. She's kind of a brat sometimes but a likable character. I normally hate Dakota Fanning's work; I think she is an overused, not very talented actress, but Coraline is the one exception. It's hard not to like any of the characters in the film, except for the Beldam. Both Coraline and Wybie are sort of misfits, and while Coraline's parents certainly aren't abusive they are often very oblivious, neglectful and very flat in terms of personality. Although Coraline is a film for children, I think anyone can enjoy it, no matter what their age is.
With trashy and pathetic films like The Hunger Games coming out these days, it's nice to know that there are original films like Coraline out there. I've heard some people say that Coraline is a rip-off of Alice in Wonderland, but I don't think so; Coraline is in a class all its own. I also recommend the novels "The Lovely Bones" and "No Place for Eco-Sinners", and the movie Paperhouse (1988), if you're a fan of Coraline.