Wandering her rambling old house in her boring new town, 11-year-old Coraline discovers a hidden door to a strangely idealized version of her life. In order to stay in the fantasy, she must make a frighteningly real sacrifice.
Practical Effects
Laika's stop-motion puppetry took 3 years for 100 minutes.
Direction
Selick turns domestic spaces into uncanny horror architecture.
Costume
Other Mother's transformation: polite host to arachnid nightmare.
Director
Henry Selick
Dakota Fanning
Coraline Jones (voice)
Teri Hatcher
Mel Jones / Other Mother (voice)
Jennifer Saunders
Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
Dawn French
Miss Miriam Forcible / Other Forcible (voice)
Keith David
The Cat (voice)
John Hodgman
Charlie Jones / Other Father (voice)
Robert Bailey Jr.
Wyborne 'Wybie' Lovat (voice)
Ian McShane
Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky / Other Bobinsky (voice)
Emerson Tenney
Magic Dragonfly (voice)
Jerome Ranft
Mover (voice)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The garden scene required 130,000 individually hand-painted flowers. Laika's crew developed new 3D printing tech just to handle the micro-expressions on Coraline's face—she has 6,333 potential face combinations.
Gaiman specifically wrote the book to scare his own daughter; Selick amplified this by making the Other Mother's transformation more gradual and seductive, mirroring how real predators operate. The 'horror for children' label is deliberate—it's about teaching kids that danger wears a welcoming face.
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