Laika Inc.Neil, left, Mitch, Courtney and Norman react to a zombie breaking into their van in 'ParaNorman.'
Laika Inc.
Neil, left, Mitch, Courtney and Norman react to a zombie breaking into their van in 'ParaNorman.'
Older teens and above who seek R-rated frights can feast on the beings from beyond that populate the Underworld and Resident Evil franchises.Now, thanks to a mini-boom in 'toons that go boo, big-screen scare fare is catering to the PG sensibilities of kids, recruiting such divergent talents as that master of mirthful macabre Tim Burton (Frankenweenie) and the goofy vocal stylings of Adam Sandler (Hotel Transylvania).This round of half-pint hauntings begins Friday as ghosts, zombies and a New England town full of clueless adults inhabit ParaNorman, the sophomore stop-motion effort from Focus Features and Laika — the animation house behind the creepy-crawly goings-on in the 2009 hit Coraline.Horror mixes with humor as a bunch of youngsters are led by an 11-year-old misfit named Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee of the vampire-themed Let Me In). His ability to see and speak to the dead suddenly becomes a welcome asset after he and his pals join forces to halt a witch's 300-year-old curse.The makers of ParaNorman relied on a slew of influences — everything from The Crucible, Night of the Living Dead and TV's Scooby-Doo to the work of teen-angst auteur John Hughes— to achieve the right tone."We didn't want to do gothic, because gothic has been done," says Chris Butler, ParaNorman's screenwriter who shared directing chores with fellow Brit Sam Fell. "We aren't going to beat Tim Burton at his own game. We were very much influenced by '80s movies like The Goonies and the lurid Technicolor of Italian horror by filmmakers like Mario Bava."Unlike most spic-and-span animated depictions of white-picket-fenced suburbia, ParaNorman's Blithe Hollow has a weathered, lived-in look borrowed from actual Colonial-era cities such as Salem and Concord in Massachusetts. The aesthetic is comfortably blue-collar and downscale: "Instead of a home-baked apple pie on a window sill, ours would probably be a pie from a Happy Meal," Butler suggests.Though parents today may have laughed their way through television showings of the 1948 horror-comedy classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, they may think twice about taking a grade-schooler to a movie in which the walking dead loom large.But Butler and Fell assure their emphasis is on fun, not fodder for nightmares. "We aren't just setting out to frighten kids and send them home crying," says Butler, noting that ParaNorman contains a rather edifying anti-bullying message, as well. "It's a fun ride, a roller-coaster ride and not a horror film."Gore was off-limits, but select ick-inducing situations were fair game, such as when the slow-moving zombies drop body parts hither and yon after rising from the ground. As anyone who is regularly exposed to children-aimed entertainment knows, "kids love gross-outs," Fell says. "A 5-year-old could handle it, definitely."Adds Butler, "For every scary moment, we immediately puncture it with a joke." You know subversive minds are at play when a battle-ax teacher shrieks to her class, "You stink of illiteracy," or height-impaired Norman finds himself caught between the dueling potbellies of his bickering parents.Tech tames the terrorThe low-tech, hands-on technique of stop-motion — animators painstakingly manipulate models frame-by-frame on a physical set — in combination with 3-D effects seems uniquely suited to evoke both giggles and goose bumps."There's something you can't get with computer animation that we get free with stop-frame," says Fell, using the British term for stop-motion. "It's real, handmade and not perfect." The result also takes the edge off tense situations. "It's puppets, so the action is somewhat removed from reality."Children are definitely welcome at Hotel Transylvania, Sony's computer-animated sendup with an all-star cast of famous monsters that opens Sept. 28. The premise: Terror strikes Count Dracula (Lugosi-laden intonations courtesy of Sandler), the operator of a creatures-only resort, when a forbidden human male (Andy Samberg) accidentally visits the inn and falls for the vampire's 118-year-old daughter (Selena Gomez).Director Genndy Tartakovsky declares his comedy to be mostly a no-scare zone and likens its laugh-inspiring approach to horror to both the Goosebumps book series and Mad magazine spoofs. Even though there are vampires on the premises, "there is no blood," he says. "We address the lore with humor and play with the mythology. When Dracula says he hates garlic, he explains it's because he's terribly allergic to it and it makes his throat swell."Earning the prime pre-Halloween date of Oct. 5, however, is Disney's black-and-white stop-motion-animated Frankenweenie, which recasts Frankenstein's monster as Sparky, a beloved dog who dies but is brought back to life by child-scientist owner Victor. Comic complications arise when jealous classmates use the technology to bring back their own pets.A sign of changing times: Burton was let go by Disney in 1984 when his same-titled live-action short that is the basis for Frankenweenie was judged too scary for young audiences.Producer Allison Abbate assures that the canine reworking of Mary Shelley's 1818 cautionary tale of innovation gone awry takes a gentler approach. "It tells the story of Frankenstein from the point of view of what if the doctor hadn't rejected his creation but loved and cared for it. Rejection created the monster, not the creation."Universal — the monster central of studios since the '30s — is pairing with Mattel to develop Monster High, a live-action musical based on a popular line of goth fashion dolls who are the offspring of horror celebrities. A straight-to-DVD computer-animated movie will arrive in stores this fall, as well. Craig Zadan, who along with business partner Neil Meron has produced such movie musicals as Chicago as well as TV's Smash, describes Monster High as "Beetlejuice meets Hairspray. It has all the quirkiness and oddness of Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands with the vitality and energy of Hairspray and Grease."While there will be laughs to be had, the characters — who are hip and cool — are allowed to retain a certain creepy factor. "We have to take them seriously and not as a joke," Zadan says. In other words, don't expect The Munsters with songs. "They have to be real."Get ready for 'Goblins'Laika looks to continue to explore the darker side of life, with adaptations of such fantasy books as Wildwood, written by Colin Meloy, the lead singer of The Decemberists, and Goblins by Philip Reeve.One bump in the night this week for fans of animated horror: Henry Selik, the stop-motion genius behind Coraline as well as the Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas, had his latest adventure in tyke-aimed terrors — or, as he likes to describe his work, "for brave kids of all ages" — canceled by Disney. No details about the movie-in-progress are known, although a new distributor could snap it up. But another project at the studio, Selik's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, is still going forth.There have been horror-related films for the younger set before, including 2006's motion-capture Monster House and Burton's 2005 stop-motion effort Corpse Bride. But there seems to be a greater realization that the current re-embrace of classic monsters has mostly left out a sizable portion of the moviegoing public: those 12 and under.Until now. ParaNorman's Smit-McPhee, 16, thinks kids will gobble up these movies like bowls of Count Chocula cereal."They might go into ParaNorman not knowing what to expect," says the horror fan, who counts films such as Friday the 13th and Child's Play, along with Selick's James and the Giant Peach, as favorites. "A zombie movie and a kids' movie don't normally go together. "But there are cool shocks as well as sweet moments."For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.
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