Coraline trailer.

I interviewed director Henry Selick around four years ago when he was doing underwater stop-motion animation for Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic. He me struck as a frustrated man; someone with lots of stories to tell, but no way to manuever through the red tape wrapped around major studio financing, particularly after his experimental, off-the-wall feature 2001 feature Monkeybone flopped (I blame Brendan Fraser). Though The Nightmare Before Christmas was a hit and has become a sort of classic, most people think Tim Burton directed the film—that too seemed to torture Selick. I’m glad he’s got another new, clearly quite dark film.