Does THIS give you the creeps?
Well buckle up, because things could have been on a whole new level of creepy.
2019 marks the 10th YEAR that we’ve been blessed with Laika’s beautiful stop motion
adaptation of Neil Gaiman's “Coraline,” which marks 10 years of people saying “that
movie creeped me out too much!” “it gave me nightmares for months!” “eww… buttons”
H.O.W.
Seriously, how?!
Cute little girl in a bright yellow raincoat and brilliant blue hair?
There is literally a saying “cute as a button!”
Haha Whoops quick rewind, I’m not here to judge your/those fears and phobias, however
odd they may be, but to let you know just HOW MUCH CREEPIER this movie could have been.
For starters, here is the book.
LOOK AT THIS CREEPY COVER.
LOOK AT IT!
It is the stuff of expressionless, clay nightmares.
I read it when I was a kiddo.
It called to me.
I may or may not have been a weirdo, but SUPER CREEPY REGARDLESS.
Notice: no blue hair, colorful clothing, adorable buttons, bright palettes, or super expressive
faces!
The smock made me think the story took place in an asylum or orphanage before I even started
reading, so that really... ah... set the tone for my experience.
Coraline is very much alone, with only a candle, and clawing shadows licking at her back.
This is the stuff of glorious nightmare fuel, and, to my over-imaginative kid self, it was
everything.
And weeks of night terrors.
Gosh, did I love it.
What I wouldn’t give to watch a film in this more abstract clay style too!
My bent weird heart is all aflutter just thinking about it.
But yeah, I read the book as a kid, and was kinda freaked out with certain things that
just didn’t make an appearance in the film, so I decided to look into that more.
I’m first and foremost a bookworm, so you know I read the book through twice, and watched
the movie twice, just to make sure I’m not talking nonsense!
And you know what?
The book IS creepier!
So, right off the rip, the decision to make a more “cheerful” set and have “goofy”
characters absolutely made the movie appeal to more viewers.
The music is light and airy and rather hopeful, even if it has a bit of a melancholic vibe.
The movie has more characters than the book, so it feels less “lonely,” too.
The order and timeline of events and pacing is also VERY different in the movie, and little
“extras” have been peppered in for flavor.
(Is that INSTANT COFFEE!?!?!
Terrifying!)
I’m not at odds with any decisions whatsoever here.
They were all very smart, and in some cases, necessary.
Making things less dark so that more people would see this awesome film, is great!
Coraline is a strong little lady, afterall, and it was heartwarming to see her on the
big screen and read her tale in a heaven-scented paperback book over and over again.
Because the book and movie timelines are drastically different, we’re going to be bouncing around
quite a bit.
I’m going to assume you’ve either read the book or have seen the movie, because,
hey, SPOILERS ABOUND.
If you haven’t done either of these things: DO ONE OR BOTH, then come back!
Anyway, the timing of happenings DOES have a significant impact on the “creep factor,”
so buckle up, and lets unspool this thread!
RIght into the Oven.
In the book, we are thrown into DANGER right off the rip.
By page 8 of 163, we discover the Other Door, which, unlike the small, child-sized portal
in the movie, is huge and wooden and carved with the most intricate of details.
Large enough for something… unsettling… to creep through, I darsay!
We are in such danger, that, shortly after discovering the door, Ms. Spink and Forcible
have already read Coraline's tea leaves, given her a charm, and issued vague warnings.
(p. 20) Back on page 10, we are already seeing shadows leading us to the door in the night.
The movie waits until much later to show this (gotta set it up just right!) and you know
Coraline is in for a rough time of things because LOOK AT THIS SKEWED CAMERA ANGLE!
You KNOW things are (finally) about to get freaky.
Oh, yeah.
You may have noticed I said “we discover” when talking about the book door - that’s
because in the book, we are essentially Coraline.
We don’t get to see her (very expressive) reactions to things.
Things HAPPEN to her, to US.
We are perched on her shoulder and experiencing everything as she is, terrified and all!
That alone turns the creepy aspects up a few notches.
RATS.
Speaking of shadows in the night, RATS are what make this a whole lotta creepier a whole
lot sooner.
In the movie, mice abound.
The night after Coraline first opens the door, sweet sweet paper mice magic themselves out
of the portal and scurry around the house, eventually leading Coraline to the (now open)
portal door.
She follows them because they look innocent and cute, and why wouldn’t you want to follow
a bounding bouncy ball mouse?
At this (much sooner) point in the book, Coraline’s mother has shut (but not locked) the Other
Door as “it doesn’t go anywhere” she says.
That night Coraline is awakened by a “Crrreeee… aaaaaccckk” and goes to investigate.
She does NOT see a bounding cute round paper mouse, but what she DOES see is “little
more than a shadow, it scuttled down the darkened hallway fast, like a little patch of night.”
(p.10) The shape scurries under furniture making its way back to the door, which is
now ever so slightly ajar…
And she shuts it.
There is no cool, purple glowy tunnel to lure her.
Instead, Coraline goes back to bed, where she “dreams of black shapes that slid from
place to place, avoiding the light, until they were all gathered together under the
moon.
Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth.
They started to sing, 'We are small and we are many
We are many and we are small We were here before you see
We will be here when you fall.'
Their voices were high and whispery and slightly whiney.
They made Coraline uncomfortable.”
(p. 11 - 12) These shadow rats chant a few more times throughout
the book, their song becoming a bit more scary and a lot more threatening each time.
In the movie, it’s Mice mice mice mice mice.
Other Mr. Bobo has a delightful mouse circus.
Mice do the Other Mother’s bidding and sound adorable alarms.
This mouse pretense is kept up until the Cat reveals their true form to Coraline, and she
begins to know the Other Mother’s true colors.
In the book, the few mice we know of are “good,” or, at least on our side.
ONLY “the crazy man upstairs” (Coraline does not find out his humorous name until
the last few pages of the book!) has a mouse circus, and those mice are the ones who warn
us of dangers to come, whose whiskers droop with the Other Mother’s mist first appears,
and then tell us that those dangers have passed.
The OTHER Mr. Bobo has a rat ah... “circus” the whole time in the book, if you can call
creepy chanting a circus.
There is no pretense in the book - RATS are EVERYWHERE.
They are sometimes shadow, sometimes corporeal, but always following the Other Mother’s
orders.
They are her “spies and hands” into the Real World, and can traverse the corridor
between the worlds without issue.
They can even steal the key from Coraline’s Real House while Coraline is in the Other
World.
These are pretty slippery foes, and the fact that Other Mother and Father are cool with
them right when we first meet them, put me on edge that this world is SERIOUSLY skewed
and alerted me to never trust anything right from the start.
The book handles the killing of the rat who steals the final soul… a little.. ah.. more
graphically.
In the movie, the Cat presents a distraught Coraline with a sand-filled rat head, which
is still clutching the “eye” in its mouth.
Eww, gross, yes.
However, jumping to the book, after Coraline falls and cries and loses all hope of escape,
She opened her eyes and saw the rat.
It was lying on the brick path on the bottom of the stair with a surprised look across
its face–which was now several inches away from the rest of it.
Its whiskers were still, its eyes were open wide, its teeth visible and yellow and sharp.
A collar of wet blood glistened at its neck.”
Yeah.
Blood.
Not sand, not stuffing.
Not a doll.
Actual former-living-and-breathing-creature-blood.
This is no imaginary world, living things can die here.
The movie Other Mother puppet spies have NOTHING on this.
Also, like I mentioned, RATS were the spies into the real-world.
Not the crafted puppets.
Now, Rats EXIST in OUR real world.
Like, yours and mine, right this very minute.
They are alive and have blood, and blend with shadows, and potentially work for another
Other Mother.
As a kid, while reading this book, I had a family of the critters LIVING ABOVE MY BED.
Forcibly scratching, frantically squeaking, incessantly crawling up and down and scampering
all around the wall.
They would only come out at night, and I was convinced they would claw their way through
the ceiling and fall on me any time now.
No one believed me, for weeks.
No one took this seriously.
I felt like book Coraline, bringing valid scary things to light, and being ignored and
dismissed by “grown ups.”
So, to say this book hit close to home, is an understatement.
And having an overactive imagination?
I was on high-alert for mysterious doors.
Pssshht.
Rats, man.
The Other Mother Herself.
Movie Other Mother at first really does resemble Coraline's Real Mother, excluding the button
eyes, naturally.
Over the course of the movie, she becomes elongated and more insect like, eventually
looking like a nightmarish spider.
Even in this form, however, she offers aid to Coraline in the form of a ‘hint’ on
where to find the lost eyes: in each of the 3 wonders she has created for her.
Even if she has no intention of honoring her word, the Other Mother at least does more
for Coraline that she ever did in the book.
Book Other Mother is a far-cry from Real Mother right away.
“She looked a little like Coraline’s mother.
Only…
Only her skin was white as paper.
Only she was taller and thinner.
Only her fingers were too long, and they never stopped moving, and her dark red fingernails
were cured and sharp.”
(pg. 27).
She has a full set of teeth, each of which are a juuuust a bit too long.
Her fingers constantly move like a “tired butterfly” and “her shiny black hair twined
and twisted about her neck and shoulders, as if it were blowing in some wind that Coraline
could not touch or feel.”
(pg. 79) It has a mind of its own.
Unlike in the movie, this Other Mother has NO reflection in mirrors, which, according
to her, “are never to be trusted” (p.101) Is she a vampire?
JUST WHAT IS A BELDAM?!
She uses more than her mouth to speak “... her voice did not just come from her mouth.
It came from the mist, the fog, the house, and the sky.”
(p. 106) Far from offering Coraline any help on the
quest, she actively hinders her instead, sending her to the mysterious empty flat next door
(where the Other Mother has set a trap: fully expecting the rotting Other Father to do Coraline
in!), and pelting wind with shards of sand and glass into Coraline’s face.
Things bleed in this world, and the Other Mother is no exception.
At the end of the quest, when Coraline launches the Cat at her, instead of just ripping off
the button eyes, the Cat rips flesh.
The Other Mother bleeds copious amounts of “deep, tarry black ooze.”
Again, what is she made of?
She also eats RAW beetles, none of the chocolate-covered stuff!
Perhaps the creepiest thing about the Other Mother is the fact that she KILLED HER OWN
MOTHER.
This is NOT something in the movie.
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” asked Coraline.
“I swear it,” said the other mother.
“I swear it on my own mother’s grave.”
“Does she have a grave?” asked Coraline (sharp as ever, I might add!)
“Oh yes,” said the other mother.
“I put her there myself.
And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.”
(How is THAT for some foreshadowing?!)
“Swear on something else.
So I can trust you to keep your word.”
“My right hand,” said the other mother, holding it up.
She waggled the long fingers slowly, displaying clawlike nails.
“I swear on that.”
(p. 92) Ok, also, the HAND.
Remember this bargain for reference later in this video!
The OTHER THEATER SHOW While… um… unsettling in the movie in
its own way, the book has Coraline in mortal danger during the show… and there are no
glitter vats to be had! (show old lady bouncing) Book Coraline enters the Other Theater all
alone, and is shown her seat by a talking dog.
Like in the movie, she is called to the stage, but as a TARGET in a dagger throwing segment.
She survives, and gets a box of chocolates as a participation prize for not dying, and
eats a piece.
I remember thinking “this is like the myth of Persephone and Hades - Coraline ate some
metaphorical pomegranate seeds, she’s gotta stay there now!
Oh No!”
One of the dogs by her discusses how you can “never tell what you are going to get in
the dark,” (referring to the chocolates) which made me think she was eating bugs.
It’s revealed that dogs eat in this world is chocolate, which is obviously deadly in
Coraline’s.
She asks how long this show goes on for, and they say “ever and always” (which is a
common phrase in the book, and a hot tip that not all is as great as it seems) and really
freaks Coraline out to the point where she gets up and walks out of the forever-repeating
show, leaving her chocolates behind for the dogs to devour.
She KNOWS not all is right, and cannot possibly stay the night.
In the movie, she is having such a great time that her other parents have to come by to
collect her at the end of the day, and she stays overnight a second time in that world!
Coraline is seemingly more taken into the Other World in the movie than in the book.
Possibly because she’s always had her talisman with her in the book!
The OTHER UPSTAIRS FLAT In the movie, Wybie and Coraline enjoy the
mouse circus upstairs early on.
The flat is so cool and there are lights and popcorn and fun cannons everywhere!
When Coraline goes back to collect the final eye later, the attic is more or less the same,
with the addition of the rat-composite Other Mr. Bobo.
In the book, instead of going upstairs for the circus, 50 rats visit her in her ugly
green-and-pink Other Bedroom and perform there.
Even then, it’s not really a circus, but ANOTHER one of those creepy chants.
So, Coraline has never been to this Other flat before going to retrieve the final soul,
and what she experiences there is… kinda creepy.
The air is heavy and the ceiling is closing in about her so tightly that she can reach
up and touch it.
The smell?
Like “every exotic food left out to rot.”
Everything is dark, and the RATS begin their chant anew:
We have eyes and we have nerveses We have tails and we have teeth
You’ll get all what you deserveses When we rise from underneath.”
p.117 By this point, Coraline has only briefly conversed
with the Real “Crazy Old Man,” and only once spoken to the Other “crazy old man”
before to decline his offer for her to come upstairs and “watch the rats feed.”
(I don't even wanna know!)
She doesn’t even know his name, other than the “crazy man from upstairs.”
So when he has a deep heart-to-heart with her, accurately pinpointing her frustrations
and issues with the Real World, trying to convince her to stay in this Other World,
it’s very unsettling, especially because the whispery disembodied voice keeps pace
with her to every room she passes through… and of course we know what happens from here!
(He is made of rats!)
The DECAYING CREATIONS In the movie, after awhile the Other Mother’s
creations start to go to seed.
Other Father looks crazy, then gets a bit runny, and the Other Spink and Forcible look
like pulled Taffy.
The Other furniture is revealed to be bugs (which, major props to this thematic detail!)
caught in a web.
However, the book did it creepier.
THIS is what gave me nightmares and shivers.
Not the sewing of button eyes, but the rich descriptions of the Creations decaying.
Let’s have a look!
Coraline’s first unpleasant encounter with the Other Father?
“There was something vague about his face – like bread dough that had begun to rise,
smoothing out the bumps and cracks and depressions.
(p. 70) Ok, cool.
We’re getting clay-like, like on the cover of the book.
But then the theater dogs?!
“There were things up there, hairless, jellyish.
She thought they might have once had faces…” (p. 100) Wait, these things are now GOOPY
and clay-ish and runny?!
There is decidedly NO stuffing and sand in this world, it’s all decaying organic matter!
Miss Spink and Forcible are not contained in a candy wrapper, but in a insect sac.
It clings Coraline’s hair and clothes the way a spider web would.
The whole Other theater is covered in the stuff as well.
The two Other actresses are still intertwined inside, but they are cold, slippery, covered
in slime, and “horribly unformed and unfinished, as if two plasticine people had been warmed
and rolled together, squashed and pressed into one thing….
And then the eyes opened, four black buttons glinting and staring down at her, and two
voices that sounded like no voice that Coraline had ever heard began to speak to her.
One of the wailed and whispered, the other buzzed like a fat and angry bluebottle at
a windowpane.”
(p. 101) So, we are getting a more and more bloaty,
decaying, slimy story about the creations dying, but when we get to the final scene
with the Other Father, things get… gross.
Coraline finds (and smells) … something… under a pile of rubbish in one corner of the
Other empty flat’s basement cellar - mixed in about the decaying curtains and mildewy
boxes and newspaper.
It smells horribly of sour wine and moldy bread here, and as she goes to leave, Coraline
spots a foot at the bottom of the trash pile.
P. 110: “... something more or less the size and shape of a person.
In that dim light it took her several seconds to recognize it for what it was: the thing
was pale and swollen like a grub, with thin, sticklike arms and feet.
It had almost no features on its face, which had puffed and swollen like risen bread dough.
The thing had two large black buttons where its eyes should have been….A mouth opened
in the mouthless face, strands of pale stuff sticking to the lips, and a voice that no
longer even faintly resembled her father’s whispered, ‘Coraline.’
The creatures twiglike hands moved to its face and pushed the pale clay about, making
something like a nose.
…”The thing was white, and huge, and swollen.
Monstrous, thought Coraline, but also miserable.”
She takes pity on it, being relegated down here for upsetting the Other Mother by saying
too much.
It is blobby, and hairless, and sticky and tacky like warm bread dough.
Unlike in the movie, where the Other Father ends up helping her retrieve the 1st eye,
in the book he is unable to resist the Other Mother’s demand to ensnare Coraline.
The shape that was her father grows.
It inflates.
It writhes, awaiting instructions, and then quick as lightning slithers up the stairs
towards her.
We have a very narrow escape through the trapdoor, and are thoroughly done with this Other World.
Sheesh.
Only a few more things to find!
The CORRIDOR - A MOST ANCIENT BEAST This tunnel between worlds starts off kinda
pretty in the movie!
Behind the small, whimsical, perfectly child-sized door is an erie glowy purple entrance to a
kids-only cosmos.
As the story progresses it fades into what looks like a cluttered attic or crawl space,
with detritus and junk sprawled everywhere, and finally, to a cobweb-infested trap.
Now, in the book, this liminal space is… alive.
Behind the HUGE ornate Narnia-gone-wrong door is something “ancient, deep and slow.”
Coraline picks up on this on her first foray into the Other World.
It’s a “dark hallway, with a cold, musty smell, like something very old and very slow.
Where strange voices whispered and distant winds howled.
Coraline became certain there was something in the dark behind her.
Something very old and very slow.”
This is not your funhouse purple tunnel, and we are definitely not alone!
When Coraline goes back into the tunnel to save her parents, she notes to the Cat that
the tunnel is shorter than she remembers it, like it’s trying to get her back in quickly.
On our escape back to the Real World, the tunnel is most certainly uphill and much much
longer than it ever had been.
The walls also feel “warm and yielding, and as if they were covered in a find downy
fur.
It moved, as if it were taking a breath.”
A few moments later, after a howling wind, Coraline reaches to stabilize herself again,
but “this time, what she touched felt hot and wet, as if she had put her hand in somebody’s
mouth…” (p.136) She trips on the Other Mother’s hand, but knows she MUST keep moving
because “whatever that corridor was was older by far than the other mother.
It was deep and slow, and it knew that she was there…”
Clearly, this tunnel is alive, and I have some theories, but we’ll save those for
another time!
Just… if we thought the Other Mother was creepy, this tunnel is indicative of some
next level terror!
The LACK OF ADULTS, and being ALL ALONE No matter how awful things get in the movie,
Coraline for the most part has real people in her corner back in the Real World.
Her parents don’t go missing until a few days of visiting the Other World, and even
then, there are still neighbors about, offering aid in the form of chams and advise.
Now, in the book, Coraline's parents disappear RIGHT AFTER her first half evening trip into
the Other World.
She doesn't even stay the night, and already her parents are out of the picture.
She bumps into Miss Spink in the fog, who prattles on about telling her parents something,
deaf to Coraline’s plight about them being missing, and now being a “single-child family.”
Spink also mentions that both of the actresses will be out of town visiting a niece tomorrow,
leaving Coraline even more alone, with no adults to help.
(in the movie at this point, they make her the talisman) In true Home Alone fashion,
Coraline fends for herself: she breaks her savings and goes shopping for food and other
staples, and generally holds down the fort until the next night… when her parents still
are not home.
She sees her them trapped in a mirror, they write “SU PLEH” on the fog, similar to
the movie (although this happens DAYS later in that).
She calls the police to tell them her parents have been KIDNAPPED, but the officer just
benignly tell her she’s simply had a nightmare and to tell her mother to fix her a hot cocoa.
Because that makes all things right.
Man, adults are really oblivious!
Knowing that she is truly all alone, and no one will believe or help her, makes this book
so scary and creepy.
WE are truly alone with her.
No help to be had.
After DAYS of being on her own, Coraline then dons a dressing gown and slippers, and, because
she will not eat the Other Mother’s food, a few apples, to go back into the Other World
to save her parents.
The END, The HAND, The LAST TASK.
Remember that bargain the Other Mother made in the book with Coraline?
The one where she swore on her “right hand?”
This is where it comes back into play.
In the movie, after a delightful gardening party that really warms the whole tone of
the movie, the children Coraline saved visit her in a dream and tell her she must get rid
of the key, because the Other Mother will never stop looking for it.
The metallic hand, meanwhile, follows Coraline back into the real world in search of the
key, although Coraline is not really aware of it until it attacks her and nearly kills
Wybie.
She traps it because it was it or them.
Her primary focus was to get rid of the key, not get rid of the hand.
In the book, Coraline is very aware that the bone white hand has followed her into the
Real World.
This is somehow creepier because it’s an organic hand, not metallic, that has been
lopped off in the Other Door.
It tries to trip her up as she escapes the tunnel.
It nearly scratches THROUGH Coraline's bedroom window GLASS in an attempt to get the key.
It attacks the actresses’ dog, leaving a huge gash in Hamish’s side.
Coraline's tea leaves say that all is well, except for the hand shape that has clung to
the side of the teacup.
This hand is Trouble with a capital “T.” In the movie, she traps the hand in the well
because it attacks her.
In the book, she has to devise a way to kill it because, according to the ghostly child
in her dream: “The bedlam swore by her good right hand… but she lied.”
Coraline knows this hand will always stalk her, and hurt those around her, and their
dogs!
She must devise a cunning trick to trap the hand.
Using the well “that if one was to fall in the well 8and look up, they would see a
sky full of stars, even in the day-time,” she feigns nonchalance and bravely sets up
a creepy picnic with dolls and toys.
She stretches a blanket over the well, weighs it down with teacups of water, and sets the
key in the center waiting for the bone Hand to make its move.
All goes to plan, and the murderous hand is trapped in the well…
WITH THE KEY.
In both the book and the movie, I gotta say… this is terrifying.
Irresponsible.
Nightmarish.
THIS CYCLE WILL CONTINUE!
Especially because the Cat proves there are still portals open - there could be one down
in the well as well!
Oh well.
So, after rereading the book a few more times, and watching the jaw-dropping animation a
few more as well, I think that my childhood read on the book was, in fact, creepier!
There are decaying creations, gory details, and dire situations that just weren’t in
the movie.
Also, TONS MORE Rats. *shiver.* Now, don’t get me wrong, both are AMAZING.
I just don’t get the visceral reaction from the cute animation that I did from the book,
although I can see how some people would - it’s like how the Boogie Man from The Nightmare
Before Christmas haunted my dreams and days for years.
I still cringe and twinge at that part in that animation!
Anyway, those are my bookwormy thoughts on “How Coraline could have been Creepier!”
I thoroughly enjoyed both the movie and the book, as different as they are.
But what are some of your thoughts?
Something you found beyond creepy?
Your favorite moment from either one?
Let me know in the comments below, and I will love you forever and always ;)
Thank you for checking out this nerdy video about a charming creepy movie and book!
It was a bit different, but a whole lot of fun to make.
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Ok, see you sooon!
Good bye!!!!