WILDWOOD*** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 5

If your dad is a billionaire willing to fund your media dreams you can turn Dark Spidey like David Ellison or use the Force for good like Travis Knight. There’s something to be said for being so insulated from commercial pressure that you can create ludicrously expensive, visually ravishing, stop-motion films that are too long and violent for kids but charm adults. His latest project, WILDWOOD, is a mash-up of elements from LABYRINTH, STAR WARS and LOTR, with a script by ParaNorman writer Chris Butler, based on the book by Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy. A teenage girl called Pru goes into a magical forest to rescue her baby brother, assisted by a nerdy gamer boy called Curtis (Jacob Tremblay). She encounters a world of magical animals, forest outlaws and Yoda-ish hippies. Together they must defeat the evil Dowager Governor (Carey Mulligan) who is so grief-stricken that she wants to use black magic to resurrect her son. 

I loved everything about the film that was to do with its look and feel. The animation is wonderful and kinetic, the soundtrack is propulsive and beautiful, and the imagination behind the worlds it creates is awe-inspiring. An early scene of the siblings cycling through Portland, Oregon is just beyond charming and the visualisation of their parents is simply adorable. It all felt organic and tactile and beautifully, lovingly hand-made. 

What I didn’t like was the script. Two hours twenty is just too long for a kids film, and as I was taken on my third, fourth and fifth chase scene even I started to tire. This film is also way way too scary for your typical kid and I am utterly surprised it’s been given a 12 rating. More than that I didn’t like that we only found out the backstory and plot motivation 45 mins in. In LABYRINTH and other great kids’ adventures you know the stakes immediately. 

It’s a measure of how far out of the movie I was that by the time we got to the big climactic battle scene I was like a) no way evil queen is losing if she has the high ground and guns b) why is her bombardment in the midst of battle when it kills her own troops rather than before the battle. So yeah. Not an immersive compelling story.

WILDWOOD is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 2hrs 13m. 

THE LIFE OF CHUCK**

I don't get the Toronto film festival audience hype for the latest Stephen King adaptation, THE LIFE OF CHUCK. It barely feels like a film at all, but two short films that do not cohere.  I wasn't moved: I didn't get it.  To be fair, I really liked part one.  It's a dystopian future where the world has been overtaken by climate change.  In affluent America, a divorced but friendly husband and wife (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan) potter about their everyday lives, navigating the rising suicide rates and the intermittent loss of the internet.  The quiet, calm observation of how the end of the world might intrude upon our everyday lives is well observed and an interesting thought experiment. The only weird note is that they keep seeing billboards thanking an accountant called Chuck for his great life - "the last internet meme".  We never learn what was behind the billboards, but we do then flip into Chuck's backstory. He's an orphaned kid raised by his charismatic grandparents - Mark Hamill as the sardonic, weary but fun grandpa has his best role in years.  Chuck learns to dance with his grandma and has two dance set pieces - one with the young Chuck at a school dance and another with the adult Chuck and a busker.  Adult Chuck is played by Tom Hiddleston, who is himself an internet meme with his love of dance. So it doesn't feel like a character is dancing but Tom is on another instagram reel. The social media notoriety actually took me out of the story, insofar as I was ever in it, and the dance scene had none of the loose breaking free of Mads Mikkelsen in ANOTHER ROUND.  What's the message of this strange film? That we all contain multitudes because we contain memories of all the people that we have ever loved? I can get behind that. That we are so narcissistic we think the whole world existed so we could dance? Er...okay.  Strange film. Doesn't work. 

THE LIFE OF CHUCK is rated R and has a running time of 111 minutes. It was released in the USA in June and will be released in the UK on August 22nd.