Happy mid-October everyone! I hope you've been enjoying Blogtober and all the fun Halloween things I've been writing about.
This time I'll be looking at a fairly recent movie called ParaNorman. It's about a kid getting through elementary school with the ability see ghosts, going through that both around and sometimes despite his family- his airheaded but determined sister and his parents- the stereotypical macho non-understanding father and the simpy mother who doesn't stand up to her husband and waits til he's gone to say what she thinks. While I don't remember any specific dates for setting, the mood is very late 90s-early 00s and is added to by the existence of flip phones. The invention of sliding was a somewhat dumb mechanism in some phones but it definitely did help in dating old media.
As you can imagine, being able to see and speak to ghosts doesn't land Norman in paradise. It gets him ostracized, called a freak and put exactly in the wrong spot and multiple times when he is able to see spots of another world creeping into his own and feeling haunted by something that he doesn't understand.
But it turns out that there's been someone able to see ghosts in this town before, back in the days when witch accusations were the rage in Massachusetts and innocent men and women were put to death over gossip and possibly hallucinogenic compounds. There was a girl put to trial for witchcraft and executed, and she cursed the judge and her accusers who have lived in the town as zombies ever since.
Since Norman can talk to the dead, he's the only one that can speak with the zombies and with the witch herself, who it turns out was only a child herself at the time but in the town is remembered as an old witch. It's sad but very true that we do that as a society, we remember children whose deaths sparked a movement as martyrs and activists but or for some instigators and criminals, but they were really all just kids.
While a fun and engaging watch, this movie made me a little sad because it's a kid who sees ghosts but in a community that doesn't believe in them he's basically a child exhibiting schizophrenia symptoms who is being treated with contempt and blame for what he's experiencing instead of concern and help. Multiple times he's told by his father to "stop being weird" and that he's the source of the problems because of his experiences. It's very obvious that the characters are boiled down examples of behaviors that real people have in the world and the callous nature of people boiled down into one person, and it makes me really despise his father through most of the movie. And while I understand the subservient nature of the 90s housewife who couldn't really have it her way, the fact that the mom only speaks up when he's gone just makes her look like a pushover in front of her children and they lose the ability to trust in her.
But I do mean it was a fun and engaging watch, because it's set in our world and therefore has unsavory people that you can't allow to ruin the whole experience (and in this case are there on purpose to point out that kind of personality). What made it so captivating was the animation, which was beautiful and so like stop motion, almost tangible with the clay textures. The characters have bright and shiny eyes and cartoony proportions, all the scenery seems to move and breathe throughout the shots.
It's definitely a perfect Halloween watch, with zombies, ghosts, dark creeping forests with twisted trees and branches, graveyards, and witches.
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