Be careful what you wish for. I'm sure you've heard that advice at some point in your life. I don't know about you, but I've never really understood it. I mean, every fairy tale and fantasy story out there tells us that wishes are good (when you wish upon a star, a dream is a wish your heart makes, etc.), and yet here in the real world we're warned that getting what we wish isn't always such a great thing. Well, now there's a fairy tale that illustrates the saying "be careful what you wish for" with beauty and poignancy... and that fairy tale is called Coraline.

Coraline comes from the imagination of renowned author Neil Gaiman and is brought to life by Henry Selick, the guy who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and their influence definitely shows. Neil Gaiman has always had a rich, if somewhat dark, imagination, and it's on full display here. I didn't read the book so I don't know how true to it the movie is, but it certainly feels like Henery Selick stayed true to Gaiman's vision. Coraline is a hauntingly beautiful film to watch with an emotionally engaging story that slowly builds tension and suspense and ends with a heart-pounding climax. It may be a stop-motion animated film, but it made me feel uneasy and tense most of way through anyway, a tribute to the powerful visuals and solid story-telling.

By the way, if you get a chance to see Coraline in 3D, don't pass it up. This film is a wonder to behold in 3D. It doesn't have a lot of "stuff flying at you out of the screen" type gimmicks, instead the 3D is used very subtly to give the visuals depth and richness and to more fully immerse in this unusual world. To be honest, I forgot half of the time that I was watching in 3D, it just seemed so natural for this movie to look the way it did with my ridiculous-looking glasses on.

One of the main reasons I found this film uncomfortable to watch is because it's yet another film that has inattentive and distant parents who neglect and marginalize their kid. Not that I'm advocating over-indulging and spoiling kids, but I've been learning (the hard way) just how important it is to cherish and be attentive to your children. Because of some of the hard lessons I've learned, it's very difficult for me to see parents portrayed that way on screen; it just hits too close to home. (I had the same problem with Swing Vote.)

The other reason is because the entire film is filled with an uneasy sense of foreboding. You know that something isn't quite right, but you can't quite put your finger on it. This is where the brilliance of the storytelling and directing come into play: the fact that you know something bad is going to happen but you aren't sure what because you aren't exactly sure what's going on. This is one creepy film that takes a turn for the truly dark late in the movie, and I left just feeling uneasy and frightened.

One of the more intriguing aspects of the film is the cat. You'll understand better when you see the film, but I couldn't shake the feeling the cat was more important to everything that was going on then we are led to believe. In fact, the cat has two key scenes that had me thinking, oddly enough, about the Holy Spirit. Now I'm sure that the filmmakers in no way intended this cat to represent God, so don't think that's what I'm saying. However, I personally just couldn't shake the parallels of the relationship between the cat and Coraline and our relationship with God.

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