It’s time for another look at a dark fantasy adaptation! We’re delighted and unsettled by the creepily whimsical world of Coraline, experienced through both Neil Gaiman’s original novella and Henry Selick’s masterful film adaptation.
Coraline Adaptation Summary
Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones has recently moved from Michigan to the historic Pink Palace Apartments in Oregon with her parents, Mel and Charlie Jones. Her parents are horticulturists who spend all their time focused on their latest book, constantly neglecting Coraline. With her parents too distracted to attend to her and only an overly talkative neighbor named Wybie to keep her company, Coraline feels bored and lonely as she aimlessly explores her new home.
During her wanderings, she discovers a tiny door in the drawing room that has been mysteriously bricked up. Despite her parents’ dismissiveness, Coraline is intrigued by its existence. She persists in asking about the door until her mother reluctantly unlocks it with the key found with their apartment keys. Coraline is disappointed to find only a brick wall behind the door.
That night, Coraline is awoken by a tapping noise. She follows a jumping mouse through a small tunnel and emerges into an idealized parallel world through the little door.
There she meets the strange, button-eyed versions of her parents – her “other mother” and “other father.” They dote on Coraline, providing her with delicious food, including a chicken pot pie made just the way Coraline likes it. Her vibrant “other father” shows Coraline his extraordinary garden filled with anomalous singing flowers. He explains he’s able to cultivate them because he has more time for gardening in this world.
Coraline has an enjoyable outing watching a mouse circus orchestrated by her neighbor Mr. Bobinsky, an eccentric Russian man training jumping mice. In this world, his circus is a marvelous success rather than the failure that it is in her regular life.
Coraline later visits the aging former burlesque dancers downstairs, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, who perform a youthful burlesque act from their glory days. Their show and conversation are full of hilarious innuendo that an adult population watching the film is sure to appreciate.
The button-eyed other mother tells Coraline this world was created just for her, inviting her to stay forever. She says to become one of them, Coraline would just need to allow her “other mother” to sew large black buttons over her eyes.
Horrified, Coraline refuses and tries to escape, but the other mother transforms into a spindly, skeletal witch, revealing herself as the creature who crafted this world, known as the Beldam. Furious at Coraline’s denial, the Beldam imprisons her in a dark parallel world as punishment.
There, Coraline meets the ghosts of three children who had fallen into the Beldam’s trap in the past, lured by the promise of an ideal life tailored to their desires. They allowed the Beldam to replace their eyes, only to have their souls stolen, trapping them forever. The ghosts implore Coraline to find their stolen eyes so their souls may be freed. Coraline vows to help them.
Aided by a sarcastic talking cat able to freely travel between worlds,
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