This review is (fairly) spoiler free.

It’s been over 125 years, give or take, since the first stop-motion animated film was made. To say that the discipline has come a long way would be an understatement. Some of the greatest and most creative films in the history of cinema have emerged from the minds and moulded magic of stop-motion animators, with studios continually pushing the boundaries of what this very special art form can achieve.

In more recent years, LAIKA Studio has added its name to that illustrious line-up, taking their slate from strength to strength. Films such as Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings and many more have seen its artists playfully put their own touches on a variety of beautiful and much loved stories, creating more hits than misses.

Yet with Wildwood, the studio has perhaps outdone itself in a manner than perhaps they could ever have dreamed of, pushing the boundaries of the discipline to a level that can only be described as breathtaking.

Adapted from Colin Meloy’s 2011 novel of the same name and illustrated by Carson Ellis, the film follows Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a young girl who finds herself thrust into a magical adventure when her baby brother is kidnapped by a flock of crows. What follows is, at the time of writing, the longest stop-motion animated feature film in history, one that does its very best to capture the twists, turns and emotional depth of its original source material.

That the film is so long is, in many ways, merely a footnote.

For it is almost impossible to watch Wildwood without marvelling at the artistry and technical precision at work. The backdrops are some of the most beautiful LAIKA has ever put on screen, with moments so visually stunning that they almost bring tears to one’s eyes. This is a film made for the big screen, where every detail, every line and every ray of light is worth indulging in.

Director Travis Knight clearly revels in his task at hand, allowing the physicality, artistic authenticity and originality of the design of the characters to shine through. This is not a film burdened by the almost digitally overshiny visual aesthetic that has characterised some of Disney’s more recent offerings. Instead, there is a tangible realness to the world of Wildwood, a true sense that everything we are watching has genuinely been lovingly crafted, shaped and brought to life by human hands.

The film’s most impressive showpiece comes towards the end, in the form of a climactic battle sequence that is nothing short of magnificent.

For those who have enjoyed many a fictional battle on screen, it unfolds in stunning fashion from beginning to end. The fluidity and intricacy of the characters’ movements almost make you question whether this is even stop-motion animation at all, such is the precision and ease with which these extraordinary characters move.

You almost have to remind yourself that there indeed were, in fact, teams of animators moving these characters millimetre by millimetre, over months and years. Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny creatures, each tweaked by infinitesimal amounts, painstakingly brought to life not by some engine, but by humans determined to create a sequence that is truly an astonishing marvel of filmmaking.

Thus to a certain extent, the plot doesn’t quite live up to the stratospheric standards set by the film’s visual department. At its heart, this is a classic coming-of-age story, in which we watch children come into their own while facing down a villain whose traumatic past has clearly never been properly confronted.

For those who love such fantasy stories, there is therefore very little reason to be disappointed. It may not be the most revolutionary fantasy narrative of all time, and the characters are as fleshed out as one would expect for such a production. Yet the visual journey is rich enough to make you believe for two hours that these tropes might not need fixing when they aren’t broken.

For all the film’s charm and ‘childhood adventure’ storyline, this is perhaps not an animated adventure to which one should take very young children. There are moments of fairly graphic violence, and the film even opens with a character choosing to jump at a fatal height from a balcony. It is a story unafraid to confront trauma, grief, violence, death, segregation, ideological damage and tyrannical ambition.

Yet it is also an out-and-out ambitious, heartfelt fantasy film, the sort that Hollywood has spent much of the past two decades attempting to recreate in the years since Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), which saw many scramble to find their own high-fantasy property that truly lives up to the scale, ambition and extraordinary detail of Jackson’s original films. But matching that achievement has been no mean feat.

As Jackson himself discovered with The Hobbit trilogy, which was perhaps always doomed to struggle in the shadow of its predecessors, recreating that particular magic is easier said than done. Amazon’s The Rings of Power has similarly struggled to reach those heights, while perhaps the truest successor to the high-fantasy ambitions of Tolkien and Jackson has been the Game of Thrones franchise, and even that famously missed a beat (or several) in its later seasons.

Wildwood, however, comes remarkably close.

Balancing heart and good old-fashioned heroic motivation with grand battle set pieces and clearly defined factions, it delivers much of what audiences have come to expect from the very best of high fantasy. There is beautiful world-building, there is magic, there is wonder, and there is an extraordinary depth of detail that makes this a film one wishes to experience again and again. Much like the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, it is, quite simply, awe-inspiring: a marvel of filmmaking.

For younger audiences, though perhaps not the very youngest, this is a good old-fashioned fantasy adventure that will keep them entertained at every turn, filled with extraordinary creatures, the odd jump scare, dangerous journeys and the triumph of love and friendship.

For adults, however, perhaps it offers something more: a connection to the fantasy stories and franchises of old that they once loved, a reminder of days when the pursuit of kinship and togetherness seemed to come with a greater sense of goodwill and sincerity than perhaps it does today.

Wildwood raises those questions too: whether we might find that goodwill once more, both within ourselves and among our neighbours, if we are but willing to set aside our differences and try.

For beneath its extraordinary artistry and grand fantasy storytelling, Wildwood reminds us that there might just be better world to be found if we but wish to try; if we take the time to be present, and to appreciate the extraordinary magic of the world around us.

There is magic in Wildwood. There is magic in its technical and artistic excellence, in the painstaking devotion of the hundreds of people who have brought this extraordinary world to life, and in the sheer ambition of what LAIKA has achieved. But perhaps most importantly, there is magic in the feeling it wishes to leave us with as we walk out of the cinema.

A feeling that, for all the darkness, apathy and pain that may exist in the world, there remains something profoundly beautiful about our ability to create messily, with our own hands. Perhaps it takes longer when its made by use truly, leading with our hearts and our fingertips; and yes, it is a risk to try out a leap of faith as large as that. But at least we had the courage to try.

And sometimes, that is all the magic we need.

Wildwood hits cinemas on the 23rd of October.