Wendell & Wild (PG-13), on Netflix
IMDb; Monkeypaw Productions; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
This came out in 2022, but I didn't see it until 2025. It had a limited theatrical run before premiering on Netflix, but it's still a Netflix original film. It was directed by Henry Selick, and co-written by Selick and producer Jordan Peele. It definitely has the vibes of both Selick and Peele's other works that I'm familiar with, which are always cool. And the stop-motion animation is quite good. I thought the story was a bit convoluted, but certainly interesting and nicely bizarre.
An 8-year-old girl named Kat Elliot is on her way home from a fair with her parents, Delroy and Wilma, when her dad loses control of the car, and they crash off a bridge. Kat survives, but her parents drown. The story then flashes forward to when Kat is 13, and has spent years getting into trouble. She's given a chance to reform by returning to her home town of Rust Bank, to attend a Catholic boarding school. There she meets a trio of girls led by Siobhan Klaxon, who immediately start calling her "KK" (or Kay-Kay?), much to her annoyance. She also meets a trans boy named Raul, who used to be friends with the girls. He tries to befriend Kat, but she doesn't want any friends. Meanwhile, the school is run by Father Bests (James Hong), who is desperate to obtain funding from Klax Korp to save the school. The corporation builds private prisons, and wants to build one in Rust Bank, which has become all but a ghost town ever since a fire destroyed the local brewery, which had been run by Kat's parents before they died. But the remaining members of the town council are against it.
In the underworld, which is run by Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames), there is a pair of demons named Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele), whose duty it is to sort of fertilize their father, Belzer's hair follicles with hair cream. But when they try eating the cream, it gives them a vision of Kat, who they believe could summon them to the land of the living. They have plans to build an amusement park, which Belzer considers treason, because he already has a hellish amusement park for torturing the souls of the dead. One day, Kat receives a mark on her hand that identifies her as a "hell maiden". Wendell and Wild then appear to Kat in a dream, giving her instructions on how to summon them, and promise to resurrect her parents, using the hair cream. There's a teacher at the school named Sister Helley (Angela Bassett), who tries to protect Kat, as she is also a hell maiden, but Kat wants nothing to do with her. And there's a guy named Manberg, who collects demons in jars. And Raul's mother, Marianna, believes that the people who run Klax Korp, Irmgard and Lane Klaxon (Siobhan's parents), are behind the fire that destroyed the brewery, but she needs a witness to prove it. However, all the witnesses are dead. Meanwhile, Father Bests makes a deal with Wendell and Wild to resurrect the deceased members of the town council, to vote in favor of the Klaxons' prison, in exchange for the funds to save the school.
And all kinds of other stuff happens, but I don't want to spoil any more of it. It's a very weird and macabre movie, but I think that's part of its charm, if you like that kind of thing. And there's a decent message about accepting troublesome parts of your past without letting them define your future. And I guess I don't know what else to say.