Review: ‘Wildwood’ never stops feeling fresh

Right as the plot picks up in LAIKA Studios’ new animated film “Wildwood,” the protagonist Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) desperately pedals on her bicycle to catch up to a murder of crows entering a forbidden stretch of wilderness. Her despair is so gorgeously captured that you feel like you’re right there with her. It’s an impressive level of immersion for any animated film, but mind-blowing in “Wildwood,” which was created almost entirely with stop-motion animation. Stop-motion films are built by hand, requiring massive sets and handcrafted puppets for each character. Achieving seamless, fluid animation takes immense time and patience. It also takes a substantial budget to cover materials, replace broken props and digitally correct mistakes that skew the stop-motion.

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