A film that took 16 years to make is finally in cinemas, and it could quietly become one of the year's best tourism ads for the Pacific Northwest. "Wildwood", the new stop-motion fantasy from Oregon studio Laika, follows 12-year-old Prue McKeel into the Impassable Wilderness — the real forests outside Portland, Oregon, here reimagined as a hidden realm of talking animals, warring factions and looming conflict.
Director Travis Knight, who also runs Laika, premiered the film in Los Angeles and framed it as a love letter to handmade animation in the AI era. Hundreds of craftspeople moved physical puppets frame by frame, and Knight argued that no algorithm can replicate that: "a computer has never felt loss," he told AFP. Animation supervisor Brad Schiff said the facial expressions on show were technically impossible just a few years ago, with each Laika film serving as research and development for the next.
The cast is heavyweight for an animated feature: Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue, Jacob Tremblay plays her friend Curtis, and Angela Bassett, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali and Awkwafina fill out the ensemble. The voice actors' own gestures were filmed during recording sessions and woven into the puppets' movements — a detail that gives characters an unusually human awkwardness.
Based on Colin Meloy's novel of the same name, the story is explicitly an ode to Portland, where Laika is based. Knight's take: "The more specific, the more intimate you make something, ultimately the more universal it becomes." Early buzz already positions the film as an Oscars frontrunner, which tends to mean a long promotional tail and renewed interest in the places that inspired it.
For travellers, that's the hook. The forests east of Portland — the real-world seed of the Impassable Wilderness — are very much visitable: think mossy trails, giant firs and the kind of moody green light that made this city a natural home for an animation studio. Fans of Laika's earlier work like "Coraline" have long made the pilgrimage to Portland, and a hit film gives them fresh reason. Expect forest walks, a creative food-and-coffee scene and a city that wears its quirky, indie identity comfortably. Whether or not you find a talking crow, it's one of the more atmospheric film-inspired detours in the United States.
