--- title: The Boxtrolls Movie Review: Laika Follows Up Coraline With New Pic description: From Laika, the studio that created 'Coraline' and 'ParaNorman,' comes this delightfully creepy stop-motion parable canonical: https://time.com/3423091/boxtrolls-movie-review/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-24T15:33:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:22:02.038Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Boxtrolls Movie Review: Laika Follows Up Coraline With New Pic og:description: From Laika, the studio that created 'Coraline' and 'ParaNorman,' comes this delightfully creepy stop-motion parable og:url: https://time.com/3423091/boxtrolls-movie-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb70d8ed8ccfd1702/6986a5181eebf7fe2f372d2f/boxtrolls.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: The Boxtrolls og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Boxtrolls Movie Review: Laika Follows Up Coraline With New Pic twitter:description: From Laika, the studio that created 'Coraline' and 'ParaNorman,' comes this delightfully creepy stop-motion parable twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb70d8ed8ccfd1702/6986a5181eebf7fe2f372d2f/boxtrolls.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Review: In _The Boxtrolls_, the Monsters Are the Good Guys > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Sep 24, 2014 3:33 PM UTC  Focus Features by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Sep 24, 2014 3:33 PM UTC Imagine that ancient Paris had been built on the vertiginous slopes of San Francisco and you’ll picture Cheesebridge, where the highborn dwell in rancid splendor at the top and society’s dregs live underground. These are the boxtrolls, uggy creatures of blue skin and Karloffian visage identified by the discarded boxes they wear. (One is called Fish, another Shoe, a third Fragile.) Hated by the humans above, who have been told that boxtrolls eat children — “Hide your tender and delicious babies!” — these bug-eating beasties are actually sweet, industrious souls. They chatter like the _Despicable Me_ minions, turn the junk they filch from the streets into marvelous gadgets and, when it’s bedtime, assemble themselves communally into a neat, 16-boxtroll cube. Weirdness with a cutting or cunning edge: _The Boxtrolls_ must be, and is, the latest 3-D feature from Laika, the Hillsboro, Ore., company specializing in stop-motion animation. After the bizarro-world domestic fantasy of _Coraline_ and the boy-who-talks-to-zombies _ParaNorman_, the new film, directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, lets the Laika animators run rampant and have macabre fun. The ghoulish riot of design channels steampunk architecture, Terry Gilliam’s _Monty Python_ animations, Ronald Searle drawings (but more grotesque), Rube Goldberg’s crazy-elaborate inventions and any noirish movie based on a Dickens novel. Which is to say that adults can appreciate _The Boxtrolls_ without feeling stupid, and kids can enjoy pretending to their parents that they’re scared. For a couple of decades, Nick Park and the stop-motion geniuses at Britain’s Aardman Studio were the undisputed champs of this gruelingly fastidious form of moviemaking, in which plasticine puppets on miniature film sets must be adjusted 24 times for every second of film. Park’s _Wallace & Gromit_ movies and _Chicken Run_ grafted a lovingly sly English wit to this antique technology, making Aardman the finest animation studio not called Pixar. But Park has been dormant lately, and the last Aardman feature, _The Pirates! Band of Misfits_ (2012), lacked the old snazz. That gave Laika an opening with its slightly creepier fare. _The Boxtrolls_ has its penny-dreadful moments, but it’s mostly a larkish stroll through a cemetery where the monsters are the good guys. In the screenplay by Irena Brignull and Adam Pava, loosely based on Alan Snow’s children’s book _Here Be Monsters!_, Lord Portley-Rind (voiced by Jared Harris) and his fellow burghers of the White Hat club dine on more varieties of moldy, solidified milk than are referenced in a [Monty Python cheese-shop sketch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPN3KTtrnZM). Craving admittance to this [scamorza](http://www.cheese.com/scamorza/) and [broncha](http://www.cheese.com/broncha/) society is one Archibald Snatcher (who looks like a carbuncular caricature of Timothy Spall and sounds like Michael Gambon, but is really Ben Kingsley at his most archly villainous). In exchange for a White Hat of his own, he promises to rid the town of the scurvy boxtrolls. Snatcher has mysterious malice in mind, along with a pathetic disability: lactose intolerance. Snatcher summons a posse of ne’er-do-wells, including a pair of arrant philosophizers (Nick Frost and Richard Ayoade) who, in the fashion of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, muse on whether the boxtrolls “understand the duality of good and evil.” If they don’t, the viewers do: the boxtrolls are the chronic underclass, who have been down so long that they can’t see up — unless they find a hero. That would be Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright, who plays Bran Stark on _Game of Thrones_), a male human raised by the boxtrolls since infancy. He believes he is one of them, until he meets Lord Portley-Rind’s rebellious daughter Winnie (Elle Fanning). She gives Eggs lessons to pass in polite society, but the tutoring doesn’t take: after kissing a lady’s hand, he licks it. The movie has its political-parable aspect, with malevolent forces convincing both the 1% and the 99% that they have reasons to fear the other. But _The Boxtrolls_ is mainly a delight for the sharp eye and the capricious mind. Why, the kids may ask, does Snatcher occasionally show up in drag as the “World Famous, Larger Than Life” Madame Frou-Frou, singing anti-boxtroll songs composed by Pythonite Eric Idle? Because he can — and because the Oregonians who made this movie love all things British and silly. If the Aardman gang has retired from honoring and satirizing English stereotypes, then the Laikans will give it a go, with love and high spirits. Stick around for the closing credits, in which the Frost and Ayoade characters pose the question of whether unseen giants are secretly manipulating their every move. The camera recedes to show Travis Knight, Laika’s boss and lead animator, fiddling in fast motion at moving the characters, millimeter by millimeter, split second by split second, in the ordeal that makes vivacious comic art. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3423091/boxtrolls-movie-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3423091/boxtrolls-movie-review/"},"headline":"Review: In The Boxtrolls, the Monsters Are the Good Guys","datePublished":"2014-09-24T15:33:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:22:02.038Z","description":"From Laika, the studio that created Coraline and ParaNorman, comes this delightfully creepy stop-motion parable of the snooty upper class, the adorable underclass and all things cheesy","url":"https://time.com/3423091/boxtrolls-movie-review/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb70d8ed8ccfd1702/6986a5181eebf7fe2f372d2f/boxtrolls.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb70d8ed8ccfd1702/6986a5181eebf7fe2f372d2f/boxtrolls.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"The Boxtrolls","caption":"The Boxtrolls","creditText":"Focus Features","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3423091/boxtrolls-movie-review/","name":"Review: In The Boxtrolls, the Monsters Are the Good Guys"}}]}] ```