I’ve been excited for Wildwood’s place on the 2026 release schedule ever since I saw the first look. If you’ve seen any of Laika’s movies, I don’t have to explain much why. The studio handcrafts its films shot by shot using stop-motion on practical sets. They’ve created some real gems, including Coraline, Paranorman and Kubo and the Two Strings. While I was expecting the epic fantasy film that it turned out to be, I was caught off guard by one big topic the movie spoke to: infertility, and I want to highlight how beautifully I thought it was handled. SPOILERS are ahead for Wildwood. Proceed with caution.
Wildwood’s Infertility Plotline Was Unexpected
The movie is one of this year’s book-to-screen adaptations from a novel written by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis. It quickly establishes the sister/brother relationship between 13-year-old Prue and her infant sibling, Mac. While her parents tell her not to take her baby brother outside, she defies them because she wants to show him around their home in beautiful Portland, OR. Then he’s mysteriously kidnapped by a murder of crows. Prue then spends the rest of the movie trying to rescue Mac from his darkly magical abduction.
Later in the film, Prue comes home at first after being unsuccessful in finding her brother. That’s when her parents come clean about something. In order for them to have kids, they sought some mysterious witchcraft from the Wildwood forest. They made a deal with the movie’s villain, the dowager governess, Alexandra, after trying everything to have kids and being unsuccessful. The terms of their deal were that their second-born belonged to Alexandra, which they agreed to because they thought they would just have one child. But then Mac came along.
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Why I’m Grateful It Talks About It
Typically, when I’ve seen the topic of infertility tackled in a movie, it’s some dark R-rated drama that’s kind of depressing, but Wildwood is a PG-13 wonder-filled fantasy that was clearly made with mass audiences in mind. It’s a topic worth talking about because infertility is a very common struggle. The World Health Organization reports that approximately one in six people of reproductive age experience it in their lifetime. Yet, it’s just not talked about enough, and therefore the public perception of having kids is normalized as something everyone can readily achieve once they are ready to.
I appreciated Wildwood in particular covering this topic because it was learned from the perspective of the child. Prue had no idea of the struggles her parents went through for her and her brother to exist. I hope this is the kind of movie that inspires some conversations among parents and kids, or among friends, about how there often isn’t a clear-cut path to parenthood.
Obviously, the grounds of how Prue’s parents were able to have their kids is fantastical, but the pain, shame and hurt associated with their efforts to become parents. So often fantasy films focus on the loss of the child losing their parents, but this movie kept the parents alive and allowed space for their experience as parents to be felt. I imagine a lot of people who can relate to the McKeels are going to really appreciate Wildwood for the subject matter, not just for its inspiring stop motion.
