When a small town comes under siege by zombies, who can it call? ‘Norman!’
From Focus Features and LAIKA, the companies behind the Academy Award-nominated animated feature Coraline, comes the comedy thriller ParaNorman. Following Coraline, ParaNorman is the second stop-motion animated feature to be made at LAIKA, an all-new frightfully funny, magically emotional, and hilariously spooky story.
ParaNorman is set in the town of Blithe Hollow, whose locals profit from mining the town’s history as the site, 300 years ago, of a famous witch hunt. Eleven-year-old Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee of Let Me In and The Road) spends much of his days appreciating the finer points of scary movies and studying ghost lore. In fact, Norman is gifted with the ability to see and speak with the dead, such as his beloved grandmother (Elaine Stritch). Most days, he prefers their company to that of his flustered father (Jeff Garlin), spacey mother (Leslie Mann), and deeply superficial older sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick). At middle school, Norman dodges bullying Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), confides in the impressionable Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), and tries to tune out his blowhard teacher Mrs Henscher (Alex Borstein).
Norman is unexpectedly contacted by his odd Uncle Prenderghast (John Goodman), who floors him with the revelation that a centuries-old witches’ curse is real and is about to come true, and that only Norman will be able to stop it from going into overdrive and harming the townspeople. Once a septet of zombies – led by The Judge (Bernard Hill) – suddenly rises from their graves, Norman finds himself caught in a wild race against time alongside Courtney, Alvin, Neil, and Neil’s musclebound older brother Mitch (Casey Affleck) as Sheriff Hooper (Tempestt Bledsoe) chases them all. Worse, the town is up in arms and taking up arms. Norman bravely summons up all that makes a hero – courage and compassion – as he finds his paranormal activities pushed to their otherworldly limits.
‘To do stop-motion animation – or, as we call it in Britain, stop-frame animation – you have to love it… for years on end,’ says director Sam Fell, who has extensive experience, and was self-taught, in the art. ‘On ParaNorman, we wanted to try a new, fresh approach to the animation – with less of a theatrical feel and more of a movie one.’ ParaNorman director Chris Butler reflects, ‘Writing ParaNorman was a labour of love. I wanted to do a zombie movie for kids – taking a Scooby-Doo mystery to its logical conclusion, rather than having it be debunked – and there was also a “what if” idea that had to do with my relationship with my grandma. So I combined them into a script that would be irreverent and full of adventure, and also be about identity. One of the themes of our movie is, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”’
Fell sparked to Butler’s concept of ‘John Carpenter meets John Hughes,’ and he was tantalised by the idea of Hughes’ Breakfast Club outcasts dealing with a Fog-like undead curse. Fell says, ‘It became us working together to capture that spirit. Chris was very open to my ideas about working out the structure a bit. We wanted to make something that a family would enjoy seeing, as well as play around with beloved genres. Chris and I both knew we were channelling a 1980s vibe, not doing a pastiche, and that we would take it visually down that road as well – into a small American town. Even though we’re British! ParaNorman is visually stunning, and a thrilling homage to entertainments that we grew up with. But it also holds deep emotional resonance and poignancy. Even during the broad and absurdist moments, we treat the subject matter seriously.’
Butler reflects, ‘Amblin [-produced] movies from the ’80s, like The Goonies, had spark, warmth, and affection – and they didn’t condescend to kids. In this fun rollercoaster ride, there would also be what kids contend with on a daily basis in the real world – fitting in, facing bullying – as well as something they don’t usually face; a zombie invasion.’ Fell remembers, ‘I was watching those movies, too, when I was a teenager. They had an edge, and dealt with issues. While being a haunted-house ride, ParaNorman addresses bullying, but not in a preachy way, and Chris’ script takes Norman’s story – and the audience – to a really strong ending.’
The directors’ past experiences in stop-motion animation meant that they knew what it would take to conceive and implement a boy’s world and its fantastical invading elements – often in miniature. Butler notes that the aesthetic, and the stop-motion process itself, also called for their ‘capturing naturalism – not realism – in the performances, in the animation, in the design. The entrée into Norman’s world for the audience is that it’s the dead people who have more time – all the time in the world – for him, and generally he can communicate better with them. He has a special gift that separates him from those around him, but it’s his gift that can save the town from a 300-year-old curse. The heart of the story is how he reaches a better understanding with both the living and the dead, including his own family acknowledging and accepting that he is different.’
Production notes
A filmmaker well versed in fear, and trusting of children’s ability to digest it, is Chris Butler of LAIKA studios, the stop-motion expressionists behind films such as Coraline (2009) and ParaNorman (2012) – he directed the latter, and describes it delightfully as ‘a gateway horror movie’. Norman sees and talks to dead people and this ‘weirdness’ makes him an outcast in his town. For Butler, it’s about maintaining a balance – ‘whenever you have something that is very intense, being sure to burst the bubble by having a moment of levity or comedy. I have a love of horror movies: if I was making a horror movie for adults, I wouldn’t worry about constantly giving them an out.’
He considers most children’s movie-making in the streaming, multi-screen era too anodyne: ‘I don’t like the idea of animated movies as a babysitting device. I hate it. I understand why it’s necessary but I hate the idea of making something that is so safe, so put through a filter, that you can just plunk a child down in front of it and they’re fine for an hour and a half. I want to make something that challenges a child to think. If I go back to my childhood, the books, the TV shows and certainly the movies that I liked most were the ones that pushed me a bit.
‘I’m all for complexity in kids’ movies today, I do think sometimes we get a little bit too caught up about explaining why a bad guy is bad, or, “Maybe they’re not so bad after all.” And I’ve even done that myself in ParaNorman. I do think there’s a danger there that you start to even everything out.
If you go back to traditional folk and fairytales, and their purpose in the socialisation of children, part of it was to present something that was frightening. Sometimes we move away from that in order to make things safer. I don’t want to get into didactic filmmaking, but I do think part of a kids’ movie is imparting some kind of emotional truth which is a lesson. It needn’t be as on the nose as a moral, but it should make a child think about who they are and what they’re doing.’
Chris Butler talking to Isabel Stevens, Sight and Sound, April 2024
PARANORMAN
Directors: Sam Fell, Chris Butler
©: Inc. Laika
a LAIKA production
A Focus Features presentation/A Focus Features release
Produced by: Arianne Sutner, Travis Knight
1st Assistant Directors: Dan Pascall, Ime Etuk
Casting by: Allison Jones
Written by: Chris Butler
Director of Photography: Tristan Oliver
Visual Effects Supervisor: Brian van’t Hul
Lead Animators: Travis Knight, Jeff Riley, Payton Curtis
Edited by: Christopher Murrie
Production Designer: Nelson Lowry
Art Directors: Francesca Berlingieri Maxwell, Phil Brotherton
Director, End Credits Sequence: Aaron Sorenson
Music: Jon Brion
Music Conducted by: Jon Brion
Re-recording Mixers: Tom Myers, Juan Peralta, Stephen Urata
Supervising Sound Editor: Ronald Eng
Voice Cast
Kodi Smit-McPhee (Norman Babcock)
Tucker Albrizzi (Neil)
Anna Kendrick (Courtney)
Casey Affleck (Mitch)
Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Alvin)
Leslie Mann (Sandra Babcock)
Jeff Garlin (Perry Babcock)
Elaine Stritch (Grandma)
Bernard Hill (The Judge)
Jodelle Ferland (Aggie)
Tempestt Bledsoe (Sheriff Hooper)
Alex Borstein (Mrs Henscher)
John Goodman (Mr Prenderghast)
USA 2012©
93 mins
Digital 4K (2D)
STOP MOTION: CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN
Fantastic Mr Fox
Thu 1 Aug 12:30; Fri 2 Aug 20:30; Sun 25 Aug 16:15
The Tale of the Fox Le Roman de Renard
Fri 2 Aug 18:15; Tue 13 Aug 20:30
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas
Sat 3 Aug 14:00; Thu 29 Aug 20:50
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
Sat 3 Aug 15:50; Sun 25 Aug 14:30 BFI IMAX; Fri 30 Aug 18:20
Frankenweenie
Sat 3 Aug 18:00; Sun 11 Aug 14:30 BFI IMAX; Fri 30 Aug 20:30
Jason and the Argonauts
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Chicken Run
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The Emperor’s Nightingale Císaruv slavík
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ParaNorman
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The Boxtrolls
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Journey to the Beginning of Time Cesta do praveku
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Fri 16 Aug 18:10
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Sun 18 Aug 12:20
Stopmotion + Q&A with director Robert Morgan
Wed 21 Aug 20:40
Aardman Shorts
Sat 24 Aug 14:30
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Tue 27 Aug 20:40
LAIKA: Frame x Frame
Embark on a journey behind the scenes of LAIKA, one of the world’s foremost pioneers in stop-motion animation. This immersive new exhibition will transport you into the boundary-pushing art and science behind every one of the nearly one million meticulously constructed frames that bring each of LAIKA’s five groundbreaking feature films to life.
Opens Mon 12 Aug
Thanks to Jez Stewart, BFI National Archive
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