While some fans are reacting negatively to the changes made in the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, I for one am pretty excited about the film. Well, at first I was iffy about the thought of it being an animated film (I personally imagined it as a live action similar to Mirrormask or Pan’s Labyrinth), but I changed my mind after seeing the trailer.

While I’m fully aware of the difference between the visuals in the original book and the film (Dave McKean’s illustrations are things that I would describe as “brilliant, but seriously creepy“), I’m not going to complain about the cartoony-style used in the film. I think that Coraline is a story I would like to share with children, but I don’t want to scare their little pants off with things like a real human being with buttons instead of eyes (for some reason, that reminds me of The Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth, who gave me nightmares for a while).

And come to think of it, Neil Gaiman stated in his blog that “… Coraline the book is much creepier for adults than it is for kids, who tend to read it as an adventure. I suspect that this will be true of the film as well.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’d be interesting to see Coraline the way kids see it (i.e. minus the creep-factor automatically generated by my presumably grown-up brain).

…not that I don’t like creepy things (note: creepy things, not scare-me-witless things), but it’d be a nice change.

Coraline hits theaters this week (February 6, 2009), but I’m not sure if it’s coming to the Philippines on the same date. Ah well. Here’s to hoping I manage to actually watch it when it does make it here.

El

El Santos is a marketing & advertising professional by day and gamer/bookworm/tarot reader by night. She’s prone to sudden fits of fangirling over her varied interests: video games, fiction, art, folkore, anime, and tarot. She currently lives with her husband and 2 rescue cats.