Coraline

Editorial

Adults leaving Coraline have been fretting about how scary it is — and they're right: it's terrifying. Children leaving the cinemas, though, have just been bouncing and laughing. As creepy as it is charming, bizarre as it is beautiful, this is a true horror movie, but also a warm, brightly coloured kids' fairytale about the magic behind the everyday.

And don't forget, children are more resilient than we think. The Wizard Of Oz's flying monkeys or the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang are terrifying at the right age, but it's rare we remain traumatised by the encounter.

Our heroine is certainly the sort of role model that any kid could wish for: Coraline — voiced by Dakota Fanning — is smart, funny and ultimately very courageous. She's also self-centred, grumpy and awkward, but this is a well-developed character rather than a Disney princess.

In her defence, her neighbours — Mr Bobinsky (McShane), and Misses Spink and Forcible, do all get her name wrong, while baffling her with their eccentricities.. And her parents, voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman, do leave her to her own devices as they try to rebuild their business in a new town. So who could blame her when she discovers another world with an "Other Mother" (Hatcher) who is devoted to satisfying her every whim, and an "Other Father" who spends all his days dreaming up tunes to sing her praise?

There's just one catch: they want to steal her eyes and replace them with buttons. It's in the Other world that Henry Selick's gorgeous stop-motion imagination is given full reign. The real world is as bleached of colour as possible, but the Other world is bathed in vibrancy. And then there's horror in the last act as the Other Mother's true intentions are made clear.

Helen O'Hara