ParaNorman

ParaNorman (2012) is a stop-motion animated comedy from Laika that you can watch online on iFILM. Norman Babcock sees and hears the dead. The problem is that nobody alive believes a word of it.

The little town of Blithe Hollow has built its whole identity around the legend of a witch executed centuries ago. When that old curse finally stirs and the dead start climbing out of the ground, the only kid who can do anything about it is an eleven-year-old outcast everyone treats as a freak. His backup is thin: a goofy new friend named Neil, his eye-rolling older sister, a school bully, and one very strange uncle. Standing against them is a whole town of grown-ups who reach for pitchforks long before they reach for reason.

Directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, the film dresses up as a zombie scare but is really about bullying, fear of the outsider, and how adults hand their grudges down to their kids. The voice cast includes Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck and John Goodman. Laika's painstaking frame-by-frame craft and a surprisingly grown-up final act turned what looks like a kids' cartoon into something people come back to. Stream ParaNorman (2012) online on iFILM.