Wendell & Wild Parent Guide

When worms burst out of her candied apple, Kat (voiced by Lyric Ross) screams and her startled father drives the car off the bridge. Kat survives but filled with guilt over her parents’ deaths, she acts out. By the time she’s 13 years old, she’s already in prison until a second chance program sees her sent to a select school in her home town – Rust Bank Catholic.

Shortly after arriving at school, Kat learns that she’s a Hell Maiden with the power to bring demons to the land of the living. Desperate to see her parents again, she makes a deal with two demons, Wendell and Wild (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele), to summon them to Rust Bank on the condition that they bring her parents back to life. The demon brothers are eager to escape the Underworld because they have plans of their own to build an amusement park. But when Wendell and Wild arrive and learn that money is needed to fund their dreams, they quickly become entangled with a corrupt priest and the business owners who control him. As their interests as Kat’s collide, conflict is brewing between the living and dead in Rust Bank.

The most important thing you need to know about Wendell and Wild is that the script was co-written by Henry Selick and Jordan Peele, based on an unpublished novel by Clay McLeod Chapman. Selick is best known for directing dark stop motion animation features like Coraline, James and the Giant Peach, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Peele is also a director who has gained acclaim for his horror movies, Get Out, Us, and Nope. Given that pedigree, it’s natural to expect top-notch stop motion animation and a clever, scary plot from their collaboration.

And the movie delivers. Wendell and Wild creates its own weird world with an Underworld bathed in eerie colors of purple, blue and green. Rust Bank itself is grey and rusted, the picture of small town decay. The story is original, the writing often darkly comic, and the characters appealing. The movie eschews jump scares for a tongue-in-cheek creepy vibe that will keep viewers engaged.

Let me be clear, traditionally religious parents who object to comic portrayals of demons or demonic possession (or even transgender characters) will not like this film and will not want their kids to see it. For other parents, it’s a decision based on your family’s tastes and values. Do you enjoy dark comedy? Will anyone in your family be freaked out by corpses being brought back from the dead? Are you looking for something a little out of the ordinary? Whatever your family likes, remember that this movie has a PG-13 rating which should be taken seriously. Don’t show it to your six-year-old unless you want weeks of nightmares.

Parents will also want to consider the film’s negative content. There are consistently high levels of violence, including an on-screen murder. There are scenes of demons, a human swearing a vow to demons, corpses being revived, and demons suffering various tortures in the Underworld. A disturbing death scene is replayed on several occasions. The movie also has a handful of profanities and a few scenes of demons using a hallucinogen which is played for laughs.

In contrast to the potentially disturbing content, the movie provides a strong message about the power of families and the strength that comes from familial affection. It also shows the positive effect of kind, nonjudgmental peers. When Kat arrives at school, her sweetly naïve classmates welcome her with open arms, determined to help her succeed. The openness extends to a transgender classmate, an artist named Raul (Sam Zelaya), who was previously known as Ramona. Although Wendell and Wild begins as a dark angsty movie about a girl and her demons, the kindness of those around her brings the story to a surprisingly sweet ending.