London Film Festival 2026 – Wildwood ★★★★★

Released: 23 October 2026

Director: Travis Knight

Starring: Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Richard E. Grant, Len Cariou, Blythe Danner, Rob Delaney & Arthur Knight

Every year, we get one animated feature that pushes the boundaries in both technical craft and storytelling. Last year, it was Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters. The year before that, it was Flow. And the year before that, it was Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron. For 2026, LAIKA’s Wildwood takes that undisputed crown.

It is a wonderful love letter to animation, the kind that genuinely makes you feel excited about the craft and its possibilities. After all, Director Guillermo Del Toro said it best: animation is cinema, and Wildwood lives up to those expectations. It may sound like a broken record to reiterate this fact, but knowing how much the industry has tossed its creative credentials into the digital woodchipper every time an AI slop video infiltrates our daily lives, to get something on this impressive scale feels not only refreshing but a miracle. Wildwood has been sixteen years in the making, based on the first entry in The Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Maloy. And while the world outside has changed significantly during those years, LAIKA’s ambition hasn’t, experimenting with new techniques whilst meticulously refining every detail in their stop-motion delivery – and we’re treated to something that’s both magical and enchanting.

Directed by Travis Knight (Masters of the Universe, Bumblebee), Wildwood is a coming-of-age story rooted in familiarity. It follows the adventures of Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), who sets off into the Impassable Wilderness after her little brother Mac (Arthur Knight) is kidnapped by mysterious forces. It bears a striking resemblance to The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, but such tributes are never out of touch with LAIKA’s own stop-motion universe. In tone and feel, there are shades of Kubo and the Two Strings in how it explores grief through fantastical means, using healing and acceptance as its gateway for Kubo’s reuniting with his parents. But Wildwood goes a step further, leaning heavily into the Coraline territory. There are no Disneyfied layers to be found despite its whimsical appearance. It’s dark, violent and heartbreaking; it’s not every day a film begins with a mechanical boy who rips out his clockwork heart before unaliving himself.

While these mature elements are not designed for younger audiences, the beauty is how much of Knight’s film still manages to subvert expectations. It’s careful not to paint broad strokes with its characters, mindful of their multifaceted personalities and the critical journey they will have to face to get Mac back. We see this a lot in Prue and Curtis’s respective arcs. Prue is a natural rebel, as any teenager would be, defying her parents’ orders to not leave their home in Portland, Oregon, with her brother. Her belief in magic is nonexistent despite the hopeful optimism from her father (voiced by Jake Johnson), who believes it resides within her. Her classmate Curtis – who joins Prue’s rescue adventure – is either a pessimist or a pacifist (the joke is that he doesn’t know, but it’s a word definitely beginning with P). But his courage comes from video games, raised in the comfort where heroes in those stories are the ones who have epic tales told about them.

It’s when the pair enter the magical world that they confront their myths. After encountering the turncoat Coyotes, they’re chased and split up. Prue finds refuge in Angela Bassett’s The General (imagine if the eagles from The Lord of the Rings could talk, along with an incredible flying sequence) and other wildlife critters who coexist with humans. Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), meanwhile, joins the Coyotes who serve their governess, Alexandria (Carey Mulligan). These opposing viewpoints crafted in Chris Butler’s screenplay allow the audience, as well as Prue and Curtis, to see the complex makeup of the forest, where segregation, corruption, bureaucracy, power and the dark arts run rampant throughout the woodlands.

But Knight saves its subversion critique for Mulligan’s Alexandria, who you can’t boil down to as a simple villain. Fuelled by dark magic and maternal choices, her grief stems from losing her son Alexei during an accident. Unable to find his body for a proper burial, Wildwood takes the dark path of what would happen if that grief goes uncomfortably unchecked. It’s a credit to Mulligan in finding that right tonal balance where she’s understanding yet terrifying in her motives to find healing.

It’s in this space where both Lee and Tremblay’s outstanding vocal performances build those empathetic bridges within Butler’s screenplay. They help to sell the film’s ‘no ordinary fairy tale’ vision, matched in wonder and awe that will test their faith, identity and what they’ve grown up to believe in.

Knight equally has fun, thematically playing around with light and dark, hopes and heartbreak, and courage and tyranny, all in one epic adventure. Some elements are lost in the lore, such as Prue’s hinted magical powers. But when it pulls itself back on track, the animation takes centre stage. It’s seamless and fluid, giving you pause for thought on how lighting and shading bring depth to its forestry and puppet designs, as if it were lit up like a live-action movie. The detailed worldbuilding brings an immersive charm where they feel ‘lived in’. But it says a lot about the animators themselves, who have lovingly brought Wildwood to life. Every specialised fingerprint that went into character movement (along with subtle shifts in walking, gestures or facial expressions), animating flight or any moments of levity featuring Awkwafina’s Septima, carries joy throughout. Like the film’s premise, they have performed a magic trick of their own. Yet it saves its best for its third act, a thrilling war sequence that mixes CG fire, violent action and mass puppets on end. Who knew such a feat would be a breathtaking experience packed with emotion and heart.

It’s LAIKA at its most incredible best with Wildwood serving as an accumulation of their groundbreaking work. In setting the bar high, they’ve written another successful chapter for the animation genre, and when the imagination is limitless, it simply soars. Pure art at its finest.