Director Report Card: Henry Selick (2022)

5. Wendell & Wild

Henry Selick doesn't make a lot of movies. Since the beginning of his career in 1975, while working as an in-betweener at Disney, he's only completed three short films, five features, and a handful of television bumpers. This relatively small body of work is presumably due to Selick's stop-motion animation being an intensive, time-consuming process and the simple fact that his movies are fucking weird.  They're not commercial. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Coraline" are beloved cult classics now but their initial box office receipts – the only language Hollywood really speaks – were middling. This is the likely reason why the numerous, promising projects Selick has been attached to over the years never made it before audiences.

Yet Netflix, in their desperate bid to buy award season prestige, briefly started the habit of bankrolling whatever crazy shit beloved auteurs wanted to make. I don't know if Selick was on the streamer giant's radar but Jordan Peele certainly was. When Peele and his partner-in-crime Keegan-Michael Key began developing a film with Selick, Netflix was eager to pick it up. This is how another entry for the surprisingly packed category of Weirdest Stop-Motion Animated Film of 2022 came to be. Netflix put the film in theaters long enough to get Academy consideration before burying it on their service.

As a child, Kat's parents died in a car wreck, leaving her a ward of the state. Enrolled in an all-girls Catholic school in the dying town of Rust Bank, Kat continues to grapple with the otherworldly visions that she's dealt with all her life. At school, she makes friends – including the daughter of the for-profit prison industrialists the Klaxons – and receives a demonic marking on her hand. Kat soon learns she is a “hell maiden” and begins communicating with two demonic brothers, Wendell and Wild. The brothers have hatched a plot to fund their dreamed-about amusement park by using the hair growth gel belonging to their massive father to resurrect the dead. The demons soon become embroiled in a scheme with the Klaxons to force through their plans for a prison. All while Kat juggles her own destiny.

“Wendell & Wild” reminds me of movies like “Akira” or Ralph Bakshi's “The Lord of the Rings.” By which I mean it feels like a long-running source material, like a comic book or lengthy novel, was adapted into a single motion picture. That the filmmakers were attempting to shove as much of the story into one movie as possible. The film is based on an unpublished children's book Selick co-wrote, the contents of which we can only speculate on, yet it contains easily enough ideas for several books. Extensive backstories for minor supporting characters, such as a nun at Kat's school who is also a Hell Maiden, are only hinted at. Oddball concepts with specific names and rules, like a demonic teddy bear or that aforementioned resurrecting hair gel, are freely thrown around. Wacky plot points with lots of ramifications are quickly introduced and we, the viewer, just have to roll with it. The film includes enough unique phrases, characters, and subplots to easily fill an entire series.

The most prominent, and likable, of those many ideas is a large cast made up of lovable misfits. We like Kat immediately, not just because the film does a good job of establishing that life has already put her through the grinder at such a young age, but also because her goth-punk attitude and fashion simply makes her a cool, stylish presence. She quickly makes friends at school, somewhat reluctantly, with Raul. Raul is trans, his former life as a girl being nodded at a few times but in a tactful way. Wendell and Wild are outcasts too, demons devoted to a whimsical dream that they are determined to fulfill at all cost. It’s easy to see why these four characters get along, even if their relationship is prickly at best. 

Yet even this gang doesn’t account for all of “Wendell & Wild’s” cast. Upon arriving at the school, Kat also meets Siobhan and her trio of friends, as well as their adorable little goat sidekick. (One could imagine a soft plush toy of that character being made and selling well, if this movie actually had any merchandise.) Siobhan’s parents, Raul’s mom, and the various faculty members at the school all have little character arcs of their own. Like I said, this is a lot of plot and circumstance for one movie. Your head starts to spin a little bit, trying to keep track of it all. 

This is probably why, sometimes, “Wendell & Wild” feels like it shortchanges its own protagonist. Obviously, Kat overcoming the grief of loosing her parents at such a young age is the main emotional through line of the movie. With so many incidents, convoluted lore, and wacky characters on its mind, the resolution to the protagonist’s trauma gets shoved into a few scene. One of which is an elaborate light show that represents her struggling with her magical powers. Not the most intuitive way to tell the story. Once her parents are resurrected as zombies, that arc can be handled a little more smoothly. Even then, it feels underserved. 

Of course, maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Perhaps I’m being intellectual. Film is a visual medium and, by that account, “Wendell & Wild” is a success. Because it looks fucking cool. The power of stop motion, when compared to other animation mediums, is how tactile it feels. These are real puppets, on real stages, being moved around by invisible hands. That brings with it a weight and detail that isn’t available in traditional animation. “Wendell & Wild” takes full advantage of this, with its colorful character designs that often bend in likably outrageous fashion. This is most evident in the finale, where the group of zombies go up against a collection of snowblowers. 

If it wasn’t obvious by now, “Wendell & Wild” is overflowing with spooky Halloween energy. The scene where the undead emerge from their caskets, thrusting worm-infested faces right into the camera, wouldn’t feel out of place in any of Selick’s past collaborations with Tim Burton. The visions of Hell in this movie, while far more whimsical than “Mad God” or “L’inferno,” is still ripe with enormous cartoon devils and shrieking, ghost-like souls. The movie also focuses more on slime, snot, and goo more than you’d probably expect, showing that the grotesque attributes of “Monkeybone” were probably Selick’s idea. 

In fact, “Wendell & Wild” resembles “Monkeybone” quite a lot. While there’s nothing here as gross as Chris Kattan tossing his own internal organs from his body, the film shows a similar fascination with decomposing corpses, via its various shambling zombies. Meanwhile, the underworld the titular brothers come from is a Hellish amusement park with lots of infernal rollercoasters. That directly takes me back to “Monkeybone’s” weirdo vision of the afterlife. If there was ever any doubt that the skeletons and ghouls in “Nightmare Before Christmas” were as much Selick’s fascination as Tim Burton’s, this should put it to rest.

As a Key and Peele project, “Wendell & Wild” is only slightly less distinct. The titular characters are visually patterned after Peele and Key, with the stout and child-like Wild contrasting nicely with the taller, skinnier, wackier Wendell. Yet Peele's touch is most evident in the subplot about the predatory prison complex industry. The Klaxons are greedy murderers who gleefully design a ploy that will send troubled kids straight from school to prison. They manipulate local politics to support their evil greed by shoving in votes from literal dead people. They lie to their daughter, who naively assumes the prisons to be comfortable establishments that treat their prisoners fairly. It's a fair take down of the prison industry, albeit one that feels a little forced into a story that's already overflowing with narrative. Considering Peele's love of discussing social woes within the horror genre in his own film, one imagines this subplot was his idea. 

Key and Peele, of course, share lots of amusing banter all throughout the film. The two have such a laidback quality to their comedy, which makes the absurd, circular directions their conversations go in so funny. Yet Wendell and Wild actually only have a supporting role in their own movie. Lyric Ross as Kat is the proper star of the movie and she gives  a likable, suitably caustic but vulnerable performance. James Hong also has a hilarious role as the quickly undead priest that runs the school, while Ving Rhames' baritone is well utilized as the titular duo's demonic father. I wish Angela Bassett was given a little more to do, as the demon-fighting nun that becomes Kat's mentor. 

"Wendell & Wild" undeniably belongs to the creative forces that birthed it. Its visual style and character designs, not to mention its fascination with spooky and kooky things, are so clearly the work of Henry Selick. Its off-beat sense of humor and socially conscious context clearly come from Key and Peele's minds. Even the afro-punk soundtrack speak to the distinctive sensibilities that spawned it, as Selick worked on a few Fishbone videos. As much as there is to like here, I do wish "Wendell & Wild" had been a series, instead of just one film. With more room to breath, its convoluted story, large cast, and extensive lore would've had more room to breath. But I still enjoyed the experience and have no doubt that it'll gather a cult following in the years to come. If nothing else, I'm thankful we got another peek at Selick's twisted imagination. [Grade: B-]