Hidden horrors of Coraline

The horror enthusiast in me has been dethawing for weeks now, as soon as I felt that first cool September breeze. 

I’ve seen many a horror film in my short twenty one years of life: ones I’ll never watch again, like The Exorcist (1973); ones I feel morally obligated to rewatch every October like Scream (1996); ones I only watch if I don’t plan on sleeping for days afterward, like As Above, So Below (2014). The genre is vast, and growing still. This year in particular has been plentiful for horror fans, with releases of films like Speak No Evil, Trap, Cuckoo, and I Saw the TV Glow–the latter of which people are still ranting and raving over.

Despite all of the evolutions made across the genre, across all mediums of storytelling, there is only one movie my mind settles on when I think of phrases like: greatest horror movie of all time, greatest fictional villain of all time, greatest final girl–should I keep going?

It has been fifteen years since I saw Coraline for the first time and it continues to hold up against the competition, classic and timeless, proving its effectiveness as a horror film time and time again. I’m not six years old anymore, yet this movie still finds ways to unsettle me, make me check over my shoulder, question doors and keys, and question reality itself.

Coraline was originally published as a novella in July 2002 by popular fantasy author Neil Gaiman (also responsible for works like Good Omens and The Sandman). The book was then adapted into the legendary animated film we know today, released in 2009 and directed by the same man that gave us the iconic The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick (truly a man after my stop-motion-loving heart). In the time since, it has become larger than life and spread across the globe, the ultimate comfort movie for weird little girls like me everywhere. 

To celebrate its fifteenth birthday, Coraline was remastered and re-released in theaters back in August. This re-release made over fifty million dollars globally, and according to Animation World Network, “the 15th anniversary re-release exceeded the original 2009 box office.”

The concept alone is unnerving–the idea of a little girl being lured into an alternate world that disguises its evil beneath magic and whimsy, preying on her naivety and curiosity. What I find most fascinating about Coraline are the sheer layers to the horror; the more times I watch it, the more layers are unveiled. We are all familiar with the Other Mother and her freaky bug furniture, her pumpkin-husband and her literal spider legs made from sewing needles. We know Miss Spink and Forcible, with their candy skin and their vampire bat-dogs. We know Mr. Bobinsky–terrifying in both worlds if you ask me, riddled with radiation sickness in the real one and possessed by evil sand-rats in the Other. 

Scarier than that are the ghost children, with buttons for eyes and their souls unable to leave that hellscape. On that same level of horror might be the Other Wybie’s clothes hanging from a flagpole to indicate that he’s dead, or the tunnel being full of spiderwebs and children’s toys, shoes, and clothes scattered about as Coraline runs for her life to escape the Other Mother.

But there is an added layer of terror in this film that all you music loving nerds must be made aware of right now: the mastermind that is French composer Bruno Coulais, responsible for the uniquely wondrous soundtrack for Coraline. His style can really only be described as genre-defying whimsical gothic, using a children’s choir and other bizarre objects like toys and instruments like the waterphone to create the atmosphere of the film and the world inside it in a subtle yet powerful way.

Coulais perfectly sums up the soundtrack of the movie in a 2009 interview did with Focus Features,

“For me [when scoring a film]... it’s not so interesting to say the same thing with the music as the story. So, I think in Coraline the music is sometimes “behind the wall,” like ghosts that haunt the movie.”

In the beginning of the film while Coraline introduces herself to the Pink Palace, the music is quiet and subtle, easy to ignore–and dare I say, boring? After all, it mirrors the tone of the world she was living in: uninteresting and isolated. The music evolves with the tone of the film: whimsical upon her first few explorations in the Other World, haunted as she searches for the ghost eyes, anxiety-inducing and scary as she fights the Other Mother. 

But even during the best of times when Coraline is happiest and feels her safest, the music is wrong. Coraline is right to mistrust a copy of her mother with buttons for eyes, just as I’m right to be skeptical of this new world she’s exploring when the background music sounds like it may jump out and snatch me up at any moment. 

Coulais used plenty of synths and pianos and singers–but he chose to use a children’s choir, and he chose to make them sing gibberish, not speaking in any real language. He chose to use glass harmonicas, waterphones, a child's banjo–all of these choices were deliberately made, and it is that fact that unsettles me so. Like the Other Mother reusing the doll she uses to lure children in, like the tunnel filling up with other children’s clothes–even the music is haunted by the children she has taken. 

As a child, what scared me most about Coraline was that it felt like I was next, even though I knew it wasn’t real. What terrifies me most now, as an adult, are the layers of horror and the intention behind every single one; no stones are left unturned and there are few gaps in the narrative. Worst of all, it’s a children’s movie. Horror is all fun and games until you bring kids into it–whether those children are targeted by Other Mothers or literal demons, to me it automatically becomes more threatening and less humorous. 

It cannot be understated how revolutionary and completely unique Coulais’ work is on Coraline. Had I ever heard anything like it before that? Have I heard anything like it since 2009? Will I ever?

Keep making your art and the world may yet find out. And yes, this is your sign for a Coraline rewatch. However long it’s been, I promise it’s too long.

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