Psycho's Movie Reviews #214: Paranorman (2012)

ParaNorman is a 2012 American stop-motion animated dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, and written by Butler. Produced by Laika, the film stars the voices of Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jodelle Ferland, Bernard Hill, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, Elaine Stritch, Tempestt Bledsoe, Alex Borstein, and John Goodman. It is the first stop-motion film to use a 3D colour printer to create character faces, and only the second to be shot in 3D. In the film, Norman, a young boy who can communicate with ghosts, is given the task of ending a 300-year-old witch's curse on his Massachusetts town.

ParaNorman was officially released on August 17, 2012, by Focus Features. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its animation and humour, and was a modest box office success, earning $107 million worldwide against its budget of $60 million. The film was nominated for that year's Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, but both lost to Pixar's Brave.

Plot

In the small fictional town of Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts, Norman Babcock is an 11-year-old boy who speaks with the dead, including his late grandmother and various ghosts in town. Almost no one believes him and he is isolated emotionally from his family while being looked down by his own peers around the school. His best friend, Neil Downe, is an overweight boy who is also bullied by Alvin and finds in Norman a kindred spirit. After rehearsing a school play commemorating the town's execution of a witch three centuries ago, the boys are confronted by Norman's estranged and seemingly deranged uncle, Mr. Prenderghast, who tells his nephew that he soon must take up his regular ritual to protect the town. Soon after this encounter, Mr. Prenderghast dies of a heart attack.

During the official performance of the school play, Norman has a nightmarish vision of the town's past in which he is pursued through the woods by townsfolk on a witch hunt, embarrassing himself and leading to a heated argument with his estranged and paranoid father Perry, who later grounds him. His mother Sandra tells him that his father's manner is stern because he is afraid for him. The next day, Norman sees Prenderghast's spirit who tells him that the ritual must be performed with a certain book before sundown that day; then making him "swear" to complete the task, Prenderghast's spirit is set free and crosses over. Norman is at first reluctant to go because he is scared but his grandmother tells him it is all right to be scared as long as he does not let it change who he is. Norman sets off to retrieve the book from Prenderghast's house (having to take it from his corpse).

He then goes to the graves of the five men and two women who were cursed by the witch, but finds that the book is merely a series of fairy tales. Alvin, a school bully who always picks on Norman, arrives and prevents Norman from reading the story before sundown. Norman attempts to continue reading from the book, to no effect. A ghostly storm resembling the witch appears in the air, summoning the cursed dead to arise as zombies, who chase the boys along with Norman's 17-year-old sister, Courtney, Neil, and Neil's older brother Mitch, down the hill and into town. Having realized that the witch was not buried in the graveyard, Norman contacts classmate Salma (who tells them to access the Town Hall's archives for the location of the witch's unmarked grave) for help. As the kids make their way to the Town Hall, the zombies are attacked by the citizenry. During the riot, Norman and his companions break into the archives but cannot find the information they need. As the mob moves to attack Town Hall, the witch storm appears over the crowd. Norman climbs the Hall's tower to read the book, in a last-ditch effort to finish the ritual, but the witch strikes the book with lightning, hurling Norman from the tower and deep into the archives.

Unconscious, Norman has a dream where he learns that the witch was Agatha "Aggie" Prenderghast, a little girl of his age who was also a medium. Norman realizes that Aggie was wrongfully convicted by the town council when they mistook her powers for witchcraft. After awakening, Norman encounters the zombies and recognizes them as the town council who convicted Aggie. The zombies and their leader Judge Hopkins admit that they only wanted to speak with him to ensure that he would take up the ritual, to minimize the damage of the mistake they made so long ago. Norman attempts to help the zombies slip away so they can guide him to Aggie's grave, but is cornered by the mob. Courtney, Mitch, Neil, and Alvin rally to Norman's side and confront the crowd, arguing that their rage, fear, and misunderstanding make them no different from the cursed townsfolk from long ago. Although the mob realizes the error of their ways, the witch unleashes her powers to create greater havoc throughout the town.

Judge Hopkins guides Norman's family to the grave in a forest. Before the grave is reached, Aggie's magical powers separate Norman from the others. Norman finds the grave and interacts with Aggie's vengeful spirit, determined to stop the cataclysmic tantrum she has been having over the years. Though she attempts to push him away, Norman holds his ground, telling her that he understands how she feels as an outcast, that her vengeance has only made her like the ones who wronged her, causing her to remember happier days. Having finally encountered someone who understands her plight and by remembering her caring mother, Aggie is able to find a measure of peace and cross over to the afterlife (having the opportunity to be reunited with her mother). The storm dissipates, and she, the zombies and even the Judge all fade away. The town cleans up and regards Norman as a hero.

In the end, Norman watches a horror film with his family and the ghost of his grandmother, who have grown to accept Norman for who he is.

Production

The idea of the film came from Chris Butler, who, realizing that zombie films often contained a degree of social commentary, thought making such a movie for kids could help express the challenges kids face growing up.

Production of the stop-motion animation feature took place at Laika's studio in Hillsboro, Oregon. The film was in production for three years, with the animating stage of production lasting about two years and beginning in late 2009. Rather than using traditional 3D format cameras, the studio had sixty Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR cameras film the movie. Advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy created the campaign for the film. ParaNorman is the first ever stop motion film to use full-colour 3D printers for replacement animation. Laika's previous film Coraline had pioneered and popularized the use of black and white 3D printers, which sped up puppet production considerably and allowed the team to make the large number of puppet faces required for the film. "Quite often it’s the stop-motion movies that are more out there," co-director Fell told The New York Times. "They're a little quirkier, they're a little harder to pin down."

Soundtrack

Jon Brion composed the film's score, and an accompanying soundtrack album was released on August 14, 2012. Bits of other music appear in the film, including the theme music from Halloween, the Donovan song "Season of the Witch" (sung by the school play cast) and "Fix Up, Look Sharp" by British rapper Dizzee Rascal. "Little Ghost", a White Stripes song from their 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan, plays at the end, over character cards identifying the main cast. However, one track in the film, an updated version of "Aggie Fights", was not included in the soundtrack.

Release/Reception/Box Office

ParaNorman was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 27, 2012 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. A new edition from Shout! Factory under license from Universal was released on September 14, 2021.

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives ParaNorman an approval rating of 89% based on 185 reviews, and an average score of 7.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Beautifully animated and solidly scripted, ParaNorman will entertain (and frighten) older children while providing surprisingly thoughtful fare for their parents." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on 33 reviews, which indicates "generally favourable reviews." Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Justin Chang of Variety wrote in his review, "Few movies so taken with death have felt so rudely alive as ParaNorman, the latest handcrafted marvel from the stop-motion artists at Laika." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter said, "It has its entertaining moments, but this paranormal stop-motion animated comedy-chiller cries out for more activity."

ParaNorman earned $56 million in North America, and $51.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $107.1 million. The film premiered in Mexico on August 3, 2012, opening in second place with box office receipts of $2.2 million, behind The Dark Knight Rises. For its opening weekend in North America, the film placed third, with receipts of $14 million, behind The Expendables 2 and The Bourne Legacy. Travis Knight, head of the studio that produced the film, believed the box office total was fine, but did not live up to his expectations.

Budget $60 million

Box office $107.1 million

My Review

Imagine you're a producer at a pitch meeting, and two animators want to make their first movie as directors. They want to work in claymation (Sam Fell and Chris Butler worked on Coraline and Flushed Away - yeah, the latter one isn't technically claymation, but besides the point) to tell the story of young Norman Babcock, who sees dead people. You'll first think that it's the Sixth Sense, especially as the kid can see dead people but no one else can. Ah, but it also has the Tim Burton approach to horror (good Tim Burton, of course) where the kid is in a suburbia where some of the adults and the bully teenagers (that is, anyone that isn't Norman or his fat friend Neil), and when the "real" people are faced with the supernatural - in this case a group of zombies who once lived in during those delightful witch trials - they freak out and form a Big Unruly Mob (cue the music!)

So far, promising. For me, the results are actually one of the real surprises of the summer, and maybe one of the only times in the past month I've felt connected to the character(s) on screen. Yeah, it's an animated movie (a 'cartoon' as my Mom would put it), and what of it? The filmmakers understand that a good way to get not just the kids but the adults into the movie is through some pop culture jokes (and they are funny ones - i.e. Halloween ring-tone, John Carpenter music, Jason mask as goof, Thriller. But the smarter way is to get us all invested in Norman, and other characters. What surprised me was that Norman isn't just a goofy kid with a supernatural complex about him, and his parents do care about him (even his sister, after a certain point), but feels the pain of being so alone with his "gift" or "curse" or what- have-you, which he happens to also share with his crazy uncle (John Goodman, so good for the few minutes on screen).

They even have the good sense to get a villain who is terrifying, this in the shape of a giant demon-spirit-ghost in the sky that has something to do with the witch trials of the 17th century (the zombies are ex- judges, we learn, who put a girl to death for "seeing' things), and so it's not so simple as to have someone pat to hate. It has some substance to it so that the kids in the audience, while being entertained by goofy things like butt jokes and a floppy tongue (you'll know it when you see it) they'll want to see what happens to the little guy who is just as scared as the Big Unruly Mob. This doesn't mean that Fell and Butler and company don't make some of the supporting characters, like Neil's dumb-jock brother (voiced by Casey Affleck?!) and a cop into archetypes. Frankly, in 90 minutes there's only so much time to develop everyone.

What counts first is that Norman is a likable, sympathetic hero (probably empathetic for most) who finds his bearings and connects with someone lost. What's doubly impressive are the little touches of comedy - the one towns-guy just waiting to get that bag of chips from the vending machine, and then coming back to get it, during the zombie attack - that the filmmakers pull off. So much of Paranorman is witty and knowing of the genre, but it doesn't kid itself on telling its story and creating its little world that matters. It's not about the 'twist' of a Sixth Sense, and it finds a balance between the weird and heartfelt. That the animation itself is inspired, wacky, and perfectly cartoonish helps a great deal. Indeed, to pay one more compliment, if you'd told me this was all Henry Selick's doing I'd believe you without question. From debut directors, it makes it that much more of a success.

I have always been a great fan of animation, so I'd see any film or show regardless of its general consensus. I found myself absolutely loving ParaNorman, it is not the best animated movie I've ever seen and there may be a couple of scenes that may fly over the heads of some, but there is so much great about ParaNorman that I didn't consider either of these huge problems. ParaNorman I found to be a great movie, even better than Aardman's The Pirates. The stop-motion animation is superb with beautiful colours, well-crafted character designs and surreal backgrounds. It also succeeds in looking like and capturing the atmosphere of classic horror films. The soundtrack is zany with some haunting moments that enhance the ghoulish surprises that are apparent here. The storytelling is rock-solid all the way through, the ending is thrilling in how surreal and ghostly the animation and atmosphere are especially and the message of humanity in the face of fear is a wonderful one and incorporated in a way that doesn't come across as preachy. The writing is hilarious and clever, with witty dialogue and great references for adults to savour to Halloween, Friday the 13th and a few others. There are also times where ParaNorman has an emotional core, and this isn't done in a manipulative way, in alternative it is done in a genuinely heartfelt way. Some have complained that some parts are too scary, something I didn't find, indeed there are some spooky scares but not overly so and they suited the story and atmosphere seamlessly. I loved the characters as well, they are not the most original in hindsight but still hugely engaging and fantastically developed. The voice acting from all involved is terrific. All in all, an outstandingly good movie, animated and otherwise. 8.5/10