How CORALINE Captured THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS Vibe For A New Era (2024)

Pre-2000, it was common for old movies to return to theaters every seven or eight years. Home video eliminated that marketplace, save for an early 2010s boon for 3D re-releases. However, a handful of motion pictures are keeping that tradition alive. Take Coraline, for example. This February 2009 feature returned to theaters last August and grossed a robust $7.1 million at the box office. That impressive sum inspired another 15th-anniversary theatrical re-release this August (complete with remastered digital 3D).

It’s odd for any classic film to get more than a cursory one-day Fathom Events re-release in the modern world, let alone lengthier re-releases across multiple consecutive years. Still, accomplishing that rare modern feat is just one of Coraline’s many impressive accolades. Coraline‘s performance has snowballed over time, turning this impressively unorthodox American animated film into a cult classic. What The Nightmare Before Christmas was to ’90s kids, Coraline has become for Gen Z horror fans. How did we get here, though? How did director Henry Selick make that Nightmare Before Christmas lightning strike twice?

Key among the reasons for Coraline’s enduring success is that it isn’t just a movie, (even Nightmare Before Christmas was based on producer Tim Burton’s doodles). Coraline’s origins lie in a 2002 Neil Gaiman novella. The original text was already incredibly popular when it hit shelves at the dawn of the 21st century. However, it’s now a staple of Halloween-themed elementary school library displays everywhere. The entire world of Coraline captivated people to such a degree that it couldn’t exist solely in literature and cinema. Coraline has infiltrated multiple stage adaptations, including a 2018 opera and an upcoming musical.

With the ubiquity of this source material, Coraline as a movie is part of a larger media ecosystem. The feature is always gaining new fans thanks to the enormous and far-reaching influence of the source material and its assorted adaptations. Coraline has endlessly benefited from the larger pop culture influence of its source material and adjacent Gaiman works.

However, this doesn’t mean the Coraline movie owes its entire current pop culture notoriety to the original novella. This motion picture clearly impacted viewers and inadvertently had excellent timing when it first hit theaters. Kid-friendly horror feature Coraline opened in domestic theaters everywhere on February 6, 2009 against He’s Just Not That Into You, The Pink Panther 2, and Push. More importantly, it debuted as an anomaly in an animated family movie landscape. Heck, it was the first stop-motion animated feature to get a wide North American theatrical release since Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in October 2005!

Meanwhile, the default style for animated family cinema in this era focused on wise-cracking CGI characters voiced by celebrities making pop culture references. March 2009 box office juggernaut Monsters vs. Aliens perfectly encapsulated this phenomenon. Animated titles like Bee Movie, Igor, and Shrek the Third (among others) further solidified this mold. For youngsters growing up in 2009, Coraline landed with a sizeable impact. Here was not only an animated feature that looked different, it also focused on a human being who had a complicated relationship with her parents. That was a situation many adolescent (and older!) moviegoers could relate to.

Meanwhile, Coraline emphasized an eerie atmosphere and entertaining frights, not a dance party finale. That was a staggering departure from typical 2000s animated cinema. One won’t find the prospect of kids getting sewn-up eyes in, say, Planet 51. Coraline felt a little dangerous and provocative for the under-ten crowd in 2009, a demographic still banned from seeing live-action horror movies. There was an excitingly unnerving atmosphere that didn’t feel the need to undercut its ominous moments with awkward jokes. Coraline would’ve been a great movie in any era. However, opening just three months after something like Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, it especially functioned as a bolt out of the blue in the late 2000s cinema landscape.

To sweeten the pot, Coraline also departed from mainstream American animated cinema norms with its titular female lead (voiced by Dakota Fanning). Shrek’s inescapable influence left domestic animation with a surplus of features trying to mimic the success of that surly ogre. The singing princesses of the ’90s were out, and mismatched comedic male duos were in.

After so many Open Seasons, Ice Ages, and Barnyards emphasizing male perspectives, Coraline’s willingness to anchor a story around a girl undoubtedly made it extra special for many young viewers. This element of Coraline made it stand out amongst spiritual Nightmare Before Christmas successors — Tim Burton’s two directorial efforts channeling that 1993 film, Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie, both center on male protagonists. Coraline’s focus on emphasizing a young girl’s point of view made it a standout title in so many strains of animation—no wonder so many viewers hold a special place for it in their hearts.

For animation devotees, Coraline’s importance stems from kicking off one of the best years of animated cinema ever.Coraline dropped just six weeks into a new year of animated storytelling that would eventually include Up, Ponyo, 9, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Secret of Kells, A Town Called Panic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, Mary and Max, and others. This exhilarating year saw countless countries, animation styles, and tones thriving in the medium. Revisiting Coraline in 2024 means returning to a truly glorious moment for animated storytelling.

It isn’t just that 2009 release date informing Coraline’s cult classic status, though. The lack of an animation house producing undoubtedly enhances Coraline affection. Coraline studio Laika certainly used this title as a springboard for further productions like ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings. The 2024 Coraline re-release contains a first look at Laika’s next movie, Wildwood. However, Coraline didn’t hail from Pixar, Illumination, DreamWorks Animation, or the other big animation houses, making her the odd girl out.

At the time, Laika was more of an independent joint. This was a genuinely frightening and visually bravura motion picture Disney or Warner Bros. would likely never green light. This means Coraline doesn’t register in people’s minds as “Disney Animation movie #42”. They associate it with their own fond memories rather than an iconic studio logo.

Coraline’s unforgettable character designs, which could only exist in stop-motion animation, also can’t be underestimated for informing its long-term appeal. There’s a reason Coraline’s exhausted dad tapping away at a computer has become a famous meme. This frame alone has such a tangible quality, thanks to the character being carved out of real materials.

His eyelids look truly puffy, while the hair on his head appears genuinely disheveled. Plus, the pronounced nature of his craned neck and weary appearance perfectly encapsulates how the grind of capitalism leaves us all feeling so extraordinarily exhausted. Turning to a stylized Coraline image was the only way to convey such anguish and effectively communicate reality’s pains. This ubiquitous meme alone encapsulates how and why Coraline’s heightened animation resonates deeply with viewers. It’s not only unique-looking; real truths are buried within its stylized flourishes.

Best of all, older Coraline fans now look back on this movie as a “gateway drug” into the broader, exciting world of horror. Selick’s filmmaking delivered impressively chilling frights and evocative production design that any PG-13 or R-rated horror feature would proudly house. After experiencing such scares in a theater, many Coraline viewers immediately wondered, “What else is out there?”. Coraline has become a go-to origin story for many current horror geeks.

To revisit Coraline on the big screen is not just dabbling in nostalgic memories or marveling at stunning stop-motion wizardry. For many, it’s to remember where their love of horror films truly began. That feat makes Coraline much more than a 2009 equivalent to The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s not just an impressively enduring cult classic reaffirming the value of bringing classic cinema to theaters. This is a title that helped birthed an entire generation of horror movie aficionados and reaffirmed the artistic vitality of stop-motion animation. No wonder Coraline continues to find her way back to the big screen with such lucrative returns.

For more, check out Michael Gingold’s originalCoraline review from 2009. Coralinereturns to theaters in a newly remastered edition for a limited time on August 15th.Tickets on sale now.