A BOOK REVIEW OF THE MOVIE

Coraline
by Neil Gaiman
Bloomsbury | August 4, 2002 

      The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring...
      In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
      The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
      Only it's different.
      At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.
      Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.

This is one of the few instances where the movie is better than the book. I initially read it but switched to the audiobook. While listening to the audiobook, I had the strongest desire to abandon the book: I was bored, and I didn't feel a creep factor that had me at the edge of the seat. To be fair, I was web surfing while "listening" to it; I was using less than 10% of my brain listening to it.

The plot development and pacing strongly deviate from each other. I prefer the movie because it showed how Coraline grew enamored with the other side through repeat visits and the extraordinary gifts; in the novel, she experiences all "gifts" in one visit. I would not want to live there after receiving those gifts. The movie makes the gifts enticing; the novel makes them deterring. The movie's pacing makes sense.

Coraline doesn't feel a sense of unease in the movie, which makes her decision more dramatic and suspenseful. In the novel, Coraline already has this immediate distrust towards the other mother because of her appearance: the white skin, long fingers, and red claws. Because Coraline already feels that something is OBVIOUSLY wrong, there isn't deception and temptation: the other side has no allure. Also, all the signs of imminent doom from Mr. Bobo, Miss Spink, and Miss Forcible completely ruined the suspense of the story. I would have been fine if foreshadowings were dropped throughout, and not like a heavy bag after climbing ten flights of stairs at the beginning of the story. I know this is aimed towards younger readers, but you don't have to spell everything out—they can take a hint!

I would love to read the history of the other mother, especially after hearing that anecdote about her mother. How did she become the villain? Why does she become a villain: nature or nurture? How does she create the world? Are there others like her? The book doesn't go into depth on what she is, where she comes from, or her motives, though, there are many videos online that speculate and theorize. A spin-off of her story would be fascinating, and it would clarify unanswered questions.