As a massive fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Wendell and Wild is a movie that I was very hyped to watch. This is brought to us by Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas. He along with Jordan Peele handled the script and in all, it is a fun and macabre movie that is great to watch if you are in the mood for something spooky.
How to Download Wendell and Wild
You can download or stream the film from Netflix. Click on the Download button at the end of this review. Check out also other Netflix animated flicks, for example, The Sea Beast, Apollo 10+1⁄2: A Space Age, Back to the Outback, or Arlo the Alligator Boy.
The Movie Review
Wendell & Wild is a stop-motion animated movie and that right away scores major points with me. It looks fantastic and they blend in some awesome special effects that complement the stop motion very well and never take away from it. I would say that I get vibes of stuff like NBX, Coraline, 9, and even a bit of Corpse Bride as well.
Before we get to the movie, we have to talk about the amazing voice cast. Our main character is a 13-year-old feisty kid called kat who is voiced by Lyric Ross (Deja Vu from This Is Us) and she is fantastic in this role. At first, all I could hear was Deja, but she soon had me hooked and just thinking of her as Kat.
We also have our two titular characters in Wendell and Wild. Wendell & Wild are two mischievous demons and they are voiced by Keegan-Michael Kay and Jordan Peele. We also have the likes of Ving Rhames, Angela Basset, and Tamara Smart to name a few of the ones that stood out to me.
Kat lost her parents at a young age and she blames herself for it. After living in the foster system, Kat is sent to an all-girls catholic school run by Father Best, this school is in her hometown where her parents died so it brings back all kinds of painful memories for Kat.
Now, down in the underworld, we have two demons, Wendell & Wild and they hate how their dad, Buffalo Belzer makes them plant and grow his hair and they find a loophole that will allow them to escape to the land of the living. These guys are a lot of fun and their schtick is probably my favorite part of the movie.
Turns out that Kat is Wendell & Wild’s hell maiden and they tell her that this magic cream they have can bring back the dead and that they will bring back her parents! Of course, Wendell and Wild are completely out of their depth and things are greatly complicated by the Klaxon family.
The Klaxon family has pretty much ruined this town and are responsible for the deaths of many. The Klaxons have a cast iron grip on this town and they are willing to do anything they can to keep it that way. These are the real villains of the movie and they end up using Wendell & Wild to get what they want!
Overall, I think that this is a really fun and creepy kind of movie. It is not so creepy that I feel kids would be scared watching it, but it certainly has a creepy vibe about it. It is not all laughs and fun, it does have a darker tone than most other animated movies, but that is one of the things I liked about it and what makes it stand out from the million other Netflix original animated movies!
