ADMIT ONE · Matinee · Seat: Row 12, Under the Crows
Wildwood opened at No. 3 in the US and Canada the weekend of October 23, 2026 (Box Office Mojo). Laika's new film is directed by Travis Knight and written by Chris Butler from the novel by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis. Portland teenager Prue watches a murder of crows carry off her baby brother Mac. She and her classmate Curtis chase them into the Impassable Wilderness at the edge of town and land in the middle of a coming war. Critics have met it with widespread acclaim (Wikipedia)).
If the handmade forest is still in your head, here are 12 more stop-motion movies. Every frame was moved by hand.
Wildwood (2026) isn't in the goodrecmovies picks yet. Everything below is.
Tear the stub: stop-motion movies like Wildwood
Laika's first feature. A girl named Coraline finds a secret door in her new home that leads to an idealized version of her life, and something dark is waiting on the other side. Henry Selick adapted Neil Gaiman's novella, and it lands right on time for Halloween week.
Travis Knight's first film as director, also for Laika, co-written by Chris Butler. In feudal Japan, a boy with a magical instrument and a missing eye sets out on a quest with a monkey charm and a beetle warrior to face his mother's twin sisters and the Moon King. Start here if you want the Wildwood team's earlier quest through a dangerous magic world.
Jack Skellington, the star of Halloween Town, wanders into Christmas Town and decides he wants to run that holiday too. Henry Selick directed, Danny Elfman wrote the songs, and it works in late October and again in December.
Nervous groom Victor flees his wedding rehearsal, practices his vows in the forest and slips the ring onto what looks like a tree root. It's the finger of a dead woman in a wedding dress, and she takes him down to the Land of the Dead as her husband. Tim Burton co-directed.
Del Toro and Mark Gustafson move Collodi's wooden boy to Fascist Italy between the wars, where Pinocchio comes to life as the son of the carver Geppetto. Dark fantasy with songs and real grief, made for older kids and adults, the same crowd Wildwood is after.
Wes Anderson adapts Roald Dahl. Mr. Fox (George Clooney) leads a run of thefts, and three farmers end up hunting his family and then his whole community. Talking animals and a war between the woods and the people outside it, played for laughs.
In the Japanese city of Megasaki, the mayor banishes every dog to Trash Island during a dog flu outbreak. His nephew Atari flies there to find his own dog, Spots, helped by a pack led by a stray named Chief. Anderson's second stop-motion film, and another kid crossing into the wild to bring someone home.
Aardman's first feature. Chickens stuck on a grim Yorkshire egg farm pin their hopes of escape on an American rooster named Rocky. Nick Park and Peter Lord built it as a prison-break movie inspired by The Great Escape.
Inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit run a pest-control business guarding the town's gardens before the giant vegetable competition, until a rabbit-like monster shows up. It spoofs the old monster movies, so it fits a Halloween night.
Shaun and his flock head into the big city to rescue their farmer, who has lost his memory, while an animal control worker chases them. It spins off from the Wallace & Gromit short A Close Shave, and it's the gentlest pick here for younger kids.
Stop-motion for grown-ups
These two are stop-motion too, made for adults, so they sit outside the family list.
** Adam Elliot's claymation drama about two unlikely pen pals, a lonely Australian girl named Mary and Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a middle-aged New Yorker with Asperger syndrome.
** Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's stop-motion comedy-drama. A customer service expert (David Thewlis) hears everyone around him as the same person, until he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in a Cincinnati hotel. Heads-up: strictly for adults.
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