I love the movie ParaNorman. It’s hugely underappreciated.
This beautiful, weird, stop-motion mash-up of classic horror and kids’ adventure tale is surprisingly emotionally mature.
It explores the way that fear creates hatred, which in turn creates fear and hatred. And that adults can sometimes act out when they’re scared, in ways that can hurt the people – the children – around them.
Warning: this post contains SPOILERS for the film ParaNorman,
and discusses: persecution (including religious-based persecution,)
Ableism, Transphobia, Homophobia, horror elements, executions,
death
I’ve seen ParaNorman quite a few times now – it always strikes me like it’s the first time I’ve seen it.
I think I forget, in between watches, just how good this film is.
First-off, of course, I appreciate anything made with stop-motion animation – stop-motion uses puppets or models, which are imaged, frame-by-frame, as they are moved incrementally by hand.
When the still images are put together (at a rate of around 24 frames per second,) it generates the illusion of movement.
In order to create smooth-looking movement, the positioning of the models from one frame to the next has to be both minute and precise.
