Coraline

***Coraline*** is a 2009 American 3D stop-motion dark fantasy horror film.

## Synopsis

An adventurous girl finds another world that is a strangely idealized version of her frustrating home, but it has sinister secrets.

## Plot

Coraline Jones and her parents, who are busy editors of a gardening catalogue, move from Pontiac, Michigan to Ashland, Oregon, where they stay at the dilapidated Pink Palace Apartments. Her new yet eccentric neighbors include Mr. Bobinsky, Miss Spink, and Miss Forcible, as well as Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, the grandson of the landlady, whose twin sister mysteriously disappeared years ago. Coraline also meets a black cat.

One day, Wybie gives her a button-eyed ragdoll which eerily resembles Coraline. The doll then lures her to a small door in the living room, which is bricked up and can only be unlocked by a button key. That night, a rat guides her through the door, where the bricks have been replaced by a corridor to the Other World, an idealised parallel dimension of Coraline's life, inhabited by button-eyed doppelgängers of people from her real world. Coraline meets the Other Mother and the Other Father, who are noticeably warmer and more attentive than her real parents.

After dinner, she goes to sleep in her Other Bedroom but awakes in her real bedroom. Despite cryptic warnings from her neighbours, Coraline visits the Other World three times, where she meets the Other Mr. Bobinsky, the Other Miss Spink and Forcible, and the Other Wybie, who is mute. The cat also visits the Other World and is somehow able to speak.

On the third visit, the Other Mother invites Coraline to stay forever, under the condition that a pair of buttons will be sewn over her eyes. Horrified, Coraline refuses the offer and attempts to flee. However, she discovers that all the exits to the real world have been blocked by the Other Mother. The cat appears and reveals to her the sinister truth about the Other World and the Other Mother. Coraline demands the Other Mother to let her return home but the Other Mother suddenly grows taller and more grotesque and imprisons her behind a mirror. There, Coraline meets the ghosts of her previous victims, including the long-lost twin sister of Wybie's grandmother. The ghosts reveal that the Other Mother, whom they refer to as the Beldam, created and sent button-eyed ragdolls that resembled them in order to spy on their lives. She eventually lured them into the Other World, under the promise of a better life, where she sewed buttons over their eyes and consumed their lives. To free their souls, their real eyes, hidden in special objects, need to be retrieved. Coraline promises to return their eyes.

Coraline is suddenly rescued from the mirror by the Other Wybie, whose mouth has been horribly stitched by the Beldam. He helps her escape into the real world in time but Coraline discovers that her parents are missing. She eventually deduces that they have been kidnapped by the Beldam. The cat advises Coraline to negotiate with the Beldam by proposing a "game": if Coraline cannot find her parents and the ghosts' eyes, she will allow her to sew buttons over her eyes, but if she can, they will all be set free. The Beldam reluctantly agrees and vanishes.

One by one, Coraline retrieves the ghosts' eyes across the Other World, now a nightmarish dimension, from its deranged inhabitants. As she does, the surroundings around the Other Pink Palace Apartments gradually disintegrates until only the living room is left. Inside, Coraline meets the Beldam in her true arachnoid form. Knowing that the Beldam will never accept her victory, she tricks her into unlocking the door. Whilst the Beldam is distracted in unlocking the door, Coraline finds her parents trapped in a snow globe, takes it, and throws the cat at the Beldam's face, who promptly rips her button eyes out.

After an intense confrontation, Coraline quickly escapes into the corridor and slams and locks the door shut onto the Beldam's hand, severing it. Her parents return to the real world, who appear to have no memory of what just happened. That night, the ghosts, who passed onto the afterlife with their real eyes, warn her to get rid of the button key to prevent the Beldam from accessing the real world. As Coraline prepares to drop it down the well, the Beldam's severed hand violently ambushes her and tries to drag her back to the Other World. Wybie saves Coraline by crushing the hand with a rock, throwing its remains and the key into the well and sealing it shut.

The next day, Coraline and her parents, who finally finished their gardening catalog, host a garden party with the neighbours. Coraline also prepares to tell Mrs. Lovat the truth about her twin sister. The film ends when the cat mysteriously disappears behind the apartment's sign.