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We’re not crying, you’re crying.
Laika Entertainment dropped the teaser trailer for Wildwood, its adaptation of Colin Meloy’s 2011 children’s fantasy novel. Let’s just say it’s nice of them to have put it out right in the middle of pollen season, so we can tell our coworkers our allergies have caught up with us.
Wildwood tells the story of two seventh-graders drawn into a hidden, magical forest near Portland as they search for one character’s baby brother.
The trailer opens with a sequence of iconic and beautifully rendered shots of the Rose City. The St. Johns and Steel Bridges. The Skidmore Fountain. Waterfront Park (with cherry trees, in bloom). A beanie-clad toddler drinks out of a Benson Bubbler. Not since Travel Oregon’s Studio Ghibli-style “Only Slightly Exaggerated” (way back in 2019) campaign have we seen our home turf rendered so beautifully in animation. It’s turning us into a bunch of saps. Fittingly, the song behind the trailer is “My Tears Are Becoming a Sea” by M83.
Don’t worry, though: the trailer takes a more sinister turn soon after. The baby is whisked away by crows, and his older sister and her friend must contend with a series of fantastical forces to rescue him. (The fictitious magical forest looks a lot like Forest Park, and the house atop it an awful lot like the Pittock Mansion, but the trailer has more sinister, anthropomorphized animals in suits than one typically sees on a hike of the Wildwood Trail.)
Wildwood is set to be released Oct. 23. The cast includes Peyton Elizabeth Lee (of the Disney Channel’s Andi Mack) and Jacob Tremblay (best known for the 2015 drama Room) as the tween heroes. Carey Mulligan and Mahershala Ali take top billing as well, followed by a truly exciting roster of supporting actors (if you’re the sort of person who gets excited about the idea of seeing Angela Bassett, Tom Waits and Richard E. Grant in a gorgeously animated movie set in Portland; guilty as charged).
