Wildwood Review: Travis Knight's Animated Triumph

Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is an ordinary girl in an ordinary corner of Portland - until her baby brother is snatched by a murder of crows and carried into the Impassable Wilderness, the forest everyone warns her never to enter. Her classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay) tags along, half by accident, and the pair find themselves in a hidden country of talking animals, warring factions, and old magic. At its center is Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), the mysterious woman commanding the crows, whose motives are thornier than the premise suggests.

The screenplay treats the rescue mission as a spine rather than the whole body. Along the way, Prue and Curtis are pulled into the politics of the wood - an owl general (Angela Bassett) holds a tenuous peace, a fox named Brenden (Mahershala Ali) proves a wry and invaluable ally, and a mystic named Septima (Awkwafina) offers aid that comes at a cost. It's a lot of world to build in one film, and the second act occasionally groans under the weight of it. But the story never loses sight of Prue's grief and determination, and that focus keeps the sprawling narrative grounded.

Knight's greatest asset has always been texture, and Wildwood is a feast of it. The forest feels damp and alive; moss clings to bark, light filters through canopy in dusty shafts, and the animators give every creature a distinct physicality. The film is fully animated, but it carries the sensibilities of handcrafted work - there's weight to how characters move, how the crows swarm, how a river churns. It's a world you can almost smell.

Lee anchors the film with a performance that's all restless defiance, and Tremblay's Curtis makes for a charmingly awkward foil. But the adults steal scenes at will. Mulligan's Alexandra is a genuinely unsettling creation - a villain whose menace lives in her stillness. Ali, meanwhile, could read a grocery list and make it sound like poetry; his Brenden brings gravitas and dry wit in equal measure. Awkwafina and Bassett make strong impressions in smaller roles, and Jake Johnson makes the most of a limited turn as Prue's worried father.

Where the film sags is in its middle hour. The Impassable Wilderness is densely populated, and the script can't resist introducing every faction and folkway, which slows momentum just as the quest should be tightening. A late-film reveal about Alexandra's connection to the wood lands with real force, but it might have hit harder had the film spent more time with her earlier rather than laying political groundwork. At 132 minutes, Wildwood is the rare animated film that could have used a trim - and the even rarer one where you feel the loss of what got cut.

None of that undoes the film's considerable achievements. The climax is a genuine showstopper, marrying emotional payoff with visual invention in a way that recalls the best of Laika's output (and Knight's own filmography). And for all its darkness - and this is a film unafraid of frightening children, in the tradition of the great fairy tales - Wildwood ends on a note of earned warmth.

Pros

• Breathtaking animation with a tactile, handcrafted feel
• Carey Mulligan's Alexandra is a standout, genuinely unnerving antagonist
• Strong vocal work across the board, especially Ali and Bassett
• An emotionally satisfying, visually inventive climax

Cons

• Overstuffed middle act sags under world-building exposition
• 132-minute runtime is stretched by an underdeveloped subplot
• Alexandra deserves more screen time than she gets

Wildwood is the kind of ambitious, slightly unruly animated film we get too rarely - one that swings for something mythic and mostly connects. It stumbles in its middle stretch and could stand to lose fifteen minutes, but Knight's command of craft, Mulligan's chilling villainy, and a finale that lands like a held breath released make it essential viewing. It isn't quite a classic, but it's close enough that you'll leave the theater wanting to see what's waiting in the woods.