Here's Where You Can Watch Coraline
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Henry Selick's 2009 film "Coraline" was unique in the history of animation in that it was the first stop-motion feature to use 3-D printers to construct its maquettes. For Selick's 1993 hit "The Nightmare Before Christmas," each character's individual face had to be hand-sculpted separately, requiring boxes and boxes of various Jack Skellington heads. 3-D printing for "Coraline" sped up the process and allowed the animators a wider variety of faces for the titular bratty girl and the terrifying adults in her life.
The story of "Coraline" was taken from Neil Gaiman's 2002 children's horror novel, itself heavily cribbing from Clive Barker's 1992 novel "The Thief of Always." In the film, Coraline (Dakota Fanning) moves with her parents to a remote house out in the middle of the woods. Coraline makes no mystery of how much she hates the move, how much she hates her mom (Teri Hatcher) for forcing the issue, and hates deeply that she'll have no friends to play with. The local weirdo Wybie (Robert Bailey, Jr.) doesn't count. Then, while searching through the new home, Coraline finds a mysterious, long, birth-canal-like opening behind a tiny door. Passing through the breathing tunnel, Coraline emerges in a parallel version of her house where her mom is now kind and caring, and her every wish is catered to. The only creepy thing is that the new mom — her Other Mother (also Hatcher) — has buttons for eyes. Indeed, everyone in the parallel universe has button eyes.
Naturally, something deeply sinister is afoot.
"Coraline" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and put the animation studio, Laika, on the map. It's a wonderfully spooky film for aspiring Goth kids. It also has an original song by They Might Be Giants.
Here's where you can watch it.
Where to feast your button eyes on Coraline
As of this writing, "Coraline" is only available on the streaming service Crunchyroll, a service devoted mostly to anime, but that covers other animation besides. Crunchyroll is currently owned by Sony and costs $7.99 a month for a subscription.
Otherwise, "Coraline" must be rented or purchased. On AppleTV and Spectrum, "Coraline" costs $3.99 to rent, while on Vudu, YouTube, Amazon Prime, and in the Google Play and Microsoft Stores, it costs $4.99 to rent. All the same services offer a purchasable version for $14.99, except for Prime Video, which only charges $13.49. One cannot say why Prime charges $1.50 less. Prime, Vudu, AppleTV, and the Microsoft store also offer 4K versions, should you live in one of the 44% of American homes with a 4K-capable TV set.
"Coraline" was presented in 3-D when it was first released, although 3-D Blu-rays of the film (released back in 2011) are only currently available on the second-hand market. The Shout! Factory put out a Blu-Ray/UHD combo pack in 2022, and it comes in a really nifty steelbook case. That edition is still available for $29.98, and it's worth the price, as it comes with multiple short making-of documentaries, an essay, and a full-length storyboard. There are also plenty of Blu-ray and DVD editions available through most online retailers, ranging in price from $18 to $23.
If one wants to treat themselves, there are also several Laika Studios DVD/Blu-ray box sets that bundle "Coraline" with "ParaNorman" (also great) and "The Boxtrolls" (also, also great). There are also sets that include "Kubo and the Two Strings" with the others, although that film isn't as much fun. These sets range from $15 to $30.
Armed with the above knowledge, gentle consumer, I order thee to go forth.