Oh, PARANORMAN… you had so much potential.
There’s plenty to like about this quirky horror-driven piece of beautiful animation put together by LAIKA under the direction of Chris Butler and Sam Fell. If there’s a bone in your body that loves old-school horror flicks and appreciates the type of monster movies that used to populate late night cable TV over the weekend or that used to make up those creature double-features even before that, then you’ll get a lot of the homage to those films PARANORMAN pays. From its genius cheap zombie B-movie schlock opening to even the carefully designed opening credits (right down to the font), it’s clear what PARANORMAN is trying to do. I only wish it would have stuck to that the whole way through. What PARANORMAN falls victim to is trying to be different just for different’s sake. I can’t fault Butler (who also penned the screenplay) and Fell for aiming to craft something off the wall and original. Taking those chances means accepting the risk that what you’re doing won’t work. PARANORMAN does work for about the first half. Sadly, it’s when it strays from formula as it heads towards its conclusion that it loses its way a bit.
Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is at the heart of the flick, a slightly odd boy with an affinity for zombie movies and the gift of being able to communicate with the undead. Whether he’s sitting around the house watching movies with his dead grandmother or saying hello to the dozens of ghosts and spirits he crosses paths with on his way to school every day, Norman has a special ability that the town of Blithe Hollow is going to need to save it from destruction fairly soon.
A long-contained Witch’s Curse is about to be unleashed on the town, and only Norman can stop it. The fate of everyone depends on him, and, unless he can keep the Witch in her grave, the dead will rise from their graves. Alongside his pudgy sidekick of sorts Neil (Tyler Albrizzi) and a band of assorted family, friends and enemies that gives PARANORMAN a Scooby-Doo meets THE MONSTER SQUAD vibe, Norman takes on the monumental task… and to this point, everything is going swimmingly. It’s only when PARANORMAN tries to flip the conventions of the genre on their ear that PARANORMAN falls into the rut of having its main character explain everything in preachy monologues, making it easier for the audience to wrap their heads around these types of changes to what felt like a familiar story. Butler and Fell really had something going for them, putting their own spin on a story we’ve seen before, adding plenty of freshness to this horror-comedy hybrid. But the third act just seems to come undone, and that stopped my ultimate enjoyment of PARANORMAN. I still like and respect a lot of what it does, but, as a whole, I just think the movie wraps as okay.
Jon Brion’s 80s-inspired score really helps Butler and Fell convey the tone they’re going for, and the LAIKA animation is the right amount of rough around the edges for a movie drawn from a long legacy of low-budget horror films. Christopher Mintz-Plasse voicing against his usual character type as Alvin the local bully is an interesting choice that certainly works in the film’s favor, and the rest of the film’s cast from Anna Kendrick to Casey Affleck to Jeff Garlin disappear into their roles, so the actors don’t overpower the characters. I just wish PARANORMAN stuck to the script a bit more, as familiarity isn’t always a bad thing. It’s what you do with it that counts.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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