The Wildwood Early Reviews are in, and the headline is almost too good to be real: a studio famous for spending years gluing felt to tiny wooden skeletons has somehow produced a movie that critics are tripping over themselves to praise.
If you’ve been anywhere near film Twitter this week, you already know something unusual is happening. If you haven’t, buckle up — the Wildwood Early Reviews read less like a critical consensus and more like a group hug.
The Rotten Tomatoes Miracle
Let’s start with the number everyone’s talking about. Following its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, Laika’s new stop-motion feature debuted to unanimous praise, landing a perfect 100% “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes based on fifteen reviews.
That’s not a typo, and it’s not a fluke of a small sample size either — by the next day the tally had grown and the number hadn’t moved an inch. As of October 12, the film held its 100% Tomatometer score across sixteen critics’ reviews, according to Digg’s roundup of the coverage.
For context on just how wild that is: if Wildwood holds the score, it becomes Laika’s highest-rated movie ever, edging out Kubo and the Two Strings (97%) and Coraline (91%), per FandomWire. In a filmography that already includes two of the most beloved stop-motion movies of the last twenty years, that’s not a small flex.
What the Critics Are Actually Saying
Scroll through the Wildwood Early Reviews and a pattern emerges fast: nearly everyone agrees the craftsmanship is on another planet. The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck calls it the studio’s most ambitious effort to date, and arguably its finest hour.
Variety’s Guy Lodge agrees it’s a spectacular success, even while noting that fans of Laika’s smaller, scrappier early films might miss some of that homemade intimacy. Over at The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw landed somewhere gentler — a solid 3/5 that’s more “charming” than “transcendent” — while still comparing the film’s old-fashioned storybook sensibility to the work of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.
Then there’s the “this might actually be the best animated film of the year” camp, and it is a crowded room. Matt Neglia of Next Best Picture called it a flat-out masterpiece, Gavin Spoors of Film Hounds went even further, dubbing it Laika’s magnum opus, and Liz Declan of ScreenRant handed out a perfect 10, writing that the film is at once beautiful and horrifying, heartwarming and gut-wrenching, hopeful and crushing.
IGN’s Tom Jorgensen was equally smitten with how the film balances spectacle and heart, and IGN’s own review echoes the sentiment across the board. It’s genuinely rare to see this much critical agreement on anything these days — even pineapple on pizza gets more pushback.
The Dissenters (Every Party Needs One)
Not every outlet is ready to crown Wildwood the second coming of Coraline, and that’s honestly part of what makes these Wildwood Early Reviews worth reading closely rather than just skimming the star ratings. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich handed the film a B-, arguing the staggering visuals can’t quite disguise a story that feels ordinary next to the studio’s usual sharpness.
It’s not a pan, exactly — more a shrug wrapped in genuine admiration for the craft, with Ehrlich noting the film is still the least enchanting of Laika’s films even as it showcases everything the studio does best.
Combined with Bradshaw’s middling Guardian grade, it means the Wildwood Early Reviews aren’t a flawless chorus — just a very, very loud one, with two notable voices humming a slightly different tune in the back row.
The Sheer, Borderline-Unhinged Scale of It All
Here’s where the Wildwood Early Reviews start sounding less like film criticism and more like engineering reports. The production reportedly involved hundreds of handcrafted sets and roughly 250 practical puppets, according to World of Reel.
Six-time Oscar nominee Caleb Deschanel shot the film — his stop-motion debut — and the result, according to The Hollywood Reporter, runs a hefty 132 minutes, reportedly the longest stop-motion feature ever made.
The Telegraph apparently needed a moment to recompose itself, writing that it had just witnessed the most beautiful stop-motion film ever made, while Collider argued the film rises above every other entry in Laika’s two-decade catalog. For a studio that built its reputation one painstaking frame at a time, that’s the animation equivalent of landing a plane on a tightrope.
The Story Behind the Spectacle
Underneath all the puppetry and the five-star fawning is an actual plot, adapted from Colin Meloy’s bestselling novel (yes, the Decemberists’ frontman) and illustrated by Carson Ellis. According to Filmofilia, crows abduct a baby, and his older sister Prue heads into the woods to find him, with a classmate named Curtis along for the ride.
It’s directed by Travis Knight (of Kubo fame) from a script by Chris Butler, and it features a genuinely stacked voice cast including Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, and Tom Waits.
Multiple outlets covering the Wildwood Early Reviews have also flagged that this is not quite a kiddie matinee — expect real stakes, real danger, and apparently some surprisingly heavy moments for a film about crows and forest spirits.
Social Media Had Thoughts, Too
Critics weren’t the only ones losing their composure. GamesRadar rounded up early audience reactions comparing the film’s battle sequences to the scale of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones — big names to invoke for a movie made largely out of foam latex and patience.
One widely shared reaction called it Laika’s crowning achievement and the kind of film a kid would rewatch hundreds of times. Whether or not that holds up long-term, it’s a strong signal that the Wildwood Early Reviews aren’t just a critic-bubble phenomenon — regular moviegoers walking out of London screenings seem just as giddy.
The Awards Buzz (and the Box Office Shrug)
With a 100% Tomatometer score and an 85 on Metacritic, per FictionHorizon, it’s no surprise that Gold Derby is already penciling the film in as an animated-feature Oscar front-runner. But — and this is the part that should keep Laika’s marketing team up at night — early projections aren’t quite matching the critical love.
GamesRadar notes that with a reported $100 million budget, the film’s domestic opening weekend is currently tracking closer to $10 million. That’s a gap wide enough to make anyone nervous, and it’s the one thorn among an otherwise rose-covered set of Wildwood Early Reviews.
Great reviews don’t automatically translate into great ticket sales, especially for a handcrafted epic competing against franchise noise at the multiplex.
When You Can See It Yourself
Laika has partnered with Fathom Entertainment for domestic distribution and FilmNation for international sales, and the film is set to open nationwide on October 23, 2026 — so you won’t have to take anyone’s word for it much longer.
The Bottom Line
So what do the Wildwood Early Reviews actually add up to? A near-unanimous standing ovation for the animation itself, a handful of thoughtful dissents on the storytelling, some very ambitious Lord of the Rings comparisons, and a studio that may have just made its most technically dazzling film yet — even if its box office fate is a little less certain than its critical one.
Whatever happens at the multiplex, Laika has clearly reminded everyone why stop-motion, done at this level of obsessive craft, still has no real digital equivalent.
One thought on “Wildwood Early Reviews: Laika’s Stop-Motion Fantasy Just Pulled Off the Impossible”