Nightmare Fuel / Coraline

"She wants something to love, I think. Something that isn't her. Or maybe... she'd just love something to eat."

Almost all of Neil Gaiman's stories are fueled by readers' terror, and Coraline is no exception.

In keeping with policy, this page is spoilers off. Proceed with caution.

---

General

• The Other Mother's real form and real real form. She starts to rot into a typical Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl straight out of The Grudge.
• That whole thing of sewing buttons onto eyes.
• Neil Gaiman holding buttons over his eyes and smiling in this video.
• This book cover.◊ Yeesh. It depicts Coraline and the Other Mother in an eerie art style, and the Other Mother is upside down, smiling with Scary Teeth.
• This movie poster.◊ Double yeesh. It shows Coraline screaming with the Other Mother's towering shadow next to her, and the words "Be Careful What You Wish For" and "A is for Adventure, the kind that you fear/When others' intentions are often unclear."
  • Not to mention this one◊. Triple yeesh! It has the Other Mother holding Coraline's shoulders, shown mostly in shadow except for her button eyes, and the slogan this time is not "Be careful what you wish for", but simply "Oh. My. Gosh."
• The Other Mother in general. A monstrous witch whose powers are fueled by the souls of the children she captures, she disguises herself as the perfect parent to lure children into the Other World by giving them love, tasty food, toys, and everything a child could want, only to trap them in a dark room and suck up their life energy. When Coraline, the next would-be victim, starts seeing through the facade and resists her, the Other Mother's appearance becomes severely emaciated to the point of turning into a skeletal, spider-like monstrosity towards the climax. Her Villainous Breakdown when Coraline defeats her reminds one of an emotionally abusive parent who tries to prevent the children she torments from finally leaving her. Finally, her behavior in luring children to the Other World is akin to a serial killer, or god forbid, a pedophile, one who specifically targets unsuspecting children by luring them in with "treats and games to play" so she can kill them (or molest them if making the pedophile comparison).
• The passage between worlds. Not only does it connect our world to the Other World, not only is it trippy and unexplained, but it's alive. This... THING that exists in the space between the two worlds is something unimaginably ancient and powerful, but definitely alive. How eldritch is it, you ask? The Other Mother has been around for hundreds of years, if not since the Dark Ages. The passage is so ancient, so powerful, and so alien that even she has no freaking clue what the hell it is, because it's so far beyond her that she CAN'T know what it is. That's right, this bizarre cross-dimensional entity is an Eldritch Abomination to other eldritch abominations! The closest we get to glimpsing its true form is when it appears as an undulating, moist, furry tunnel of living flesh that bears a disturbing resemblance to an esophagus.

The Novel/Audiobook

• Adults actually find this book (and film) scarier than kids do, with the unsettling feeling of the Other World being not quite right giving way to its later decaying transformation into the Beldam's lair.
  • That, and the theme of children being so easily lured away by adults other than their parents through entertainment and tasty food. Does This Remind You of Anything?
  • Also from the novella: the Other Mother trying to sew buttons onto Coraline's eyeballs. And she's already done this to three other children in the backstory.
  • Then there's the fact that the other children were trapped there until their death — and even beyond it! The only thing Coraline can do for them is to release them into a proper afterlife...
• The Other Mother, in the book, swears on her mother's grave. Coraline is surprised that her mother is dead. The Other Mother's reply? "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to climb out, I put her back."
• In the audiobook, the rats' 'song' is heard as a breathy, hissing chant with little semblance of a tune. It comes right the hell out of nowhere, and is arguably the creepiest part of the whole story. And the book is narrated by the author so you know this is the way the song was meant. And then in a later chapter, it happens again.
  "You'll all get what you deserveses,"
  when we rise from underneath."
• Some of the pictures in the novel — especially the picture◊ of the Other Mother with a bug in her mouth. It just doesn't look right.
  • The Other Mother's incredibly detailed left hand.◊
• The American cover of the book. The girl is evidently Coraline (or a mirror reflection of her). Her body looks mostly normal, but her neck is huge and very awkward, and her face looks like it had buttons sewn onto them once, then removed, leaving big hollows where they once were.
• The empty flat and what becomes of the Other Father. He slowly reverts back to a shapeless form, and even when he's an amorphous mass, even when his eyes have fallen out, he's still forced to chase Coraline out of the cellar...
• Not to mention the Other Forcible and Spink towards the end of the novella, trapped in a cocoon with their bodies melding together. Eesh.
• The Other Mother's hand when it's after Coraline. It leaves deep scratches on the window pane, and hurts one of Spink and Forcible's dogs. And when Coraline is making plans to deal with it... the sequence where she's walking to the well and can tell that something is following her, always staying just out of sight, is one of the scariest bits of the whole book. Even when Coraline tricks the hand into falling into the well, as she's hauling the boards back over the opening, the narration states, 'She didn't want anything to get in. She didn't want anything to ever get out.'
• This little Big-Lipped Alligator Moment from the novel:
  " And there was something else, which suddenly scuttled between her feet, nearly sending Coraline flying. She caught herself before she went down, using her own momentum to keep moving. She knew that if she fell in that corridor she might never get up again. Whatever that corridor was was older by far than the other mother. It was deep, and slow, and it knew that she was there. . ."
• Also in the novel, during Coraline's search for the souls, she comes across a bathtub containing a dead spider the size of a cat. It's mentioned only briefly, is never explained, and Coraline doesn't dwell on it. In its own eerie way, it's almost scarier than a living spider because of how nonchalantly it gets introduced and dismissed with no indication of where this enormous spider came from, why it's there, or why it's dead.
• The description of the Beldam's house decaying in the book is done with great subtlety, as it starts to look less real and begins to take the visual properties of a 2D-still image of a house. It starts with the appearance of a slightly saturated still photograph and then gradually loses its colour and dimensional form until it resembles a simple line-drawing of a house by the time Coraline goes to confront the Other Mother at the climax.

The Film

• Coraline's interaction with the Other Bobinsky near the end of the film.
  Coraline: You're just a copy she made of the real Mr. B.
  Other Bobinsky: Not even that... anymore.
  (Coraline takes off his hat, revealing that he's only a swarm of rats)
  • The build-up to that reveal, where all you see was his uniform doing some unsettling acrobatics while his head appears to be missing, is also pretty damn frightening.
• The Cat's summary of the Other Mother:
  The Cat: She wants something to love, I think, something that isn't her... Or maybe she'd just love something to eat.
  • There's also his rather ominous summary of the Other World.
    Cat: You probably think this world is a dream come true... but you're wrong.
• Coraline escaping the Other Mother.
  Other Mother: (screaming) DON'T LEAVE ME, DON'T LEAVE ME!! I'LL DIE WITHOUT YOU!!!
  • Right before that: "You dare disobey your MOTHER?!!"
    • If you pause at the right moment, or look really closely when Coraline kicks her in the face after shouting the above line, you can see that the Other Mother's face literally SPLITS IN HALF upon impact.
  • Following that, we have the shot of the door to the Other World getting closer and closer to the real world before Coraline finally slams the door on the other world.
    • And the Other Door doesn't move closer smoothly; to judge by the rhythm and sound effects, the Other Mother is beating so hard against it that she's literally pushing the two realms closer to each other with the force of her blows.
  • During the climax of the film, Coraline struggles to fight off the Other Mother's disembodied metal hand. The camera zooms back to the house, which shows the door to the Other World banging loudly and glowing ominously...
  • It doesn't help that after they throw the hand and the key inside the well, you can hear the Other Mother whispering, "No".
• What happened to the three ghost children.
  "She spied on our lives, through the little doll's eyes. And saw that we weren't happy. So she lured us away, with treasures and treats, and games to play. Gave all that we asked, yet we still wanted more. So we let her sew the buttons. She said she loved us... but she locked us here. And ate up our lives."
  • It's no better in the book:
    "She left us here... She stole our hearts, she stole our souls, and she took our lives away, and she left us here, and forgot about us in the dark."
  • The little ghost children in general (except for at the end, where they're kind of cute). Seriously, think about it — dead children, talking about the horrors of the Other World in a distinguishably childlike way, looking beyond creepy, and all with buttons in their eyes.
  • Notice the bed in the room. It's filthy and has a sunken-in pit filled with dark fluid...
  • That tall ghost girl's face, which is stuck in a permanent scream... Many fans have suggested that she died screaming in agony and/or terror.
• On Coraline's first night in the Other World, after the Other Mother suggests playing hide and seek in the rain, Coraline asks, "What rain?", as there is no rain to be spoken of. A second later, lightning flashes and rain begins. But look closer at the lightning bolt, and it looks very similar to a needle-like, clawed, and outstretched hand...
• The Weird Moon functions as a timer of sorts during Coraline's game with the Other Mother. How so? The less time Coraline has, the more the moon is covered... by a giant black button. As if that frequent reminder wasn't enough, there's the way the music stops dead every time she looks up.
  • The (admittedly rather obscure) musical adaptation has a short little ditty called "The Greeting Song", which makes excellent and frightening use of Last-Second Word Swap.
  Coraline, you're tangible,
  Coraline, you're grand.
  How we'd like to take you by the hand.
  Coraline, you're nice and plump,
  Coraline, you're sweet.
  How we'd like to have you to... Greet.
• When the Other Wybie expresses his disapproval through a frown instead of smiling like he's supposed to, the Other Mother sews his lips into a perma-grin. The stitches are cut, but not before we see what The Joker might have looked like as a child.
• When Coraline discovers the remains of the Other Wybie — his empty clothes, strung up and flying from a flagpole.
• The Other Father's deterioration and death.
  "Sssorry... ssssooo sssorry... M-Mother making meeeee..."
  • This scene in the video game is also terrifying. You have to press the right buttons to dodge the giant praying mantis, but if you press the wrong ones, there's a scene of Coraline falling to the floor and the claw of the mantis swinging down. It doesn't show the impact though, thank goodness.
• The Other Father's song about Coraline, which eerily foreshadows the whole thing about sewing buttons onto eyes.
  Makin' up a song about Coraline
  She's a peach, she's a doll, she's a pal of mine
  She's as cute as a button in the eyes of everyone who's ever laid their eyes on Coraline
  When she comes around exploring
  Mom and I will never ever make it boring
  Our eyes will be on Coraline!
  • "Our eyes will be on Coraline" could mean two things, either of which are scary: it could reference that the doll sees all, and by all, they mean all. Your adventures in the woods, your yearning for a more interesting life, your parents who can easily be replaced... That line can be also taken more literally: the Other Mother wants to take Coraline's eyes and replace them with buttons, so her eyes will physically be on Coraline.
  • The line This piano plays me! is funny at the time, but becomes scary when it's revealed that the Other Father isn't actually evil and is just being forced to try to kill Coraline by the Other Mother, meaning that the piano controlling his hands was most likely against his will.
• When Coraline refuses to apologise to the Other Mother for saying that she isn't her mother, the Other Mother responds, "I'll give you to the count of three. One... two... THREEEEE!" as she turns into her true form, and as she's screaming the word "three", drags Coraline off by the nose.
• Coraline suddenly getting grabbed by the Other Spink and Forcible monster, a melded form of both of them as they change back to taffy.
  "Thief! GIVE IT BACK!"
  • The whole Nothing Is Scarier approach during that scene. Coraline walking down the dark aisle with the dog-bats above and then noticing a giant candy wrapper wrapped around something (and it's not candy) that's hanging from the ceiling. The whole time you're just waiting for something to pop out or wondering what the hell is inside that giant candy wrapper.
• The rats in general. Their true form is hideous. Especially with those button eyes.
• The making of the puppet-things themselves here. *shudder*
• The scene after Coraline throws the cat at the Other Mother and her eyes get clawed off and she turns the room into a web.
  • If anything, the music during that scene can certainly scare the crap out of you, especially if you listen to it in the dark.
• Another big one happens at the very beginning of the movie: the re-sewing of the little girl doll into Coraline during the opening credits. The braided hair is unraveled, the clothes are removed, and the button eyes are pulled off, leaving the doll as a featureless, human-shaped sack of cloth that gets refilled with sawdust and made into a button-eyed copy of Coraline herself. Even before we see the Other Mother, this scene is a reflection of how easily she replaces her playthings. The vaguely soothing music, "Mechanical Lullaby", that plays during the scene softens it a little (or makes it worse, it's up to the viewer to decide).
• Anybody noticed the Beldam was humming to the song in the beginning of the movie? Was she actually playing it on a recorder?
• The fact that all of the background songs are sung not only by a creepy-sounding choir of children but also in complete gibberish.
• At the end of the film, we pan out on the garden in the real world. Where the garden in the Other World was made to look like Coraline◊, the way the real version has been planted looks alarmingly like the Other Mother◊...
• One scene that stands out is when the Other Mother eats "cocoa beetles". In the book, it's made out to be a mother-daughter talk where she takes Coraline aside in a last-ditch effort to discipline her. During the whole conversation, she casually eats beetles out of a paper bag as if they're chocolates, and even offers Coraline one. When this fails, the Other Mother locks her in a small, decrepit room as punishment. The movie retains the scene and makes it even more creepy, with an off-putting soundtrack and the Other Mother becoming increasingly monstrous when Coraline refuses to comply.
  Other Mother: ...You may come out when you've learned to be a loving daughter.
• One line. One shot. And everything changes from a fantasy adventure to a horror story. Namely, the scene where they introduce the buttons they want to sew in Coraline's eyes.
  "Black Is Traditional."◊

The Game

• Ever wanted to see a button-eyed Coraline for yourself? The book and the film infer and threaten it. The game gladly shows it. Enter a special Cheat Code to give Coraline button eyes permanently. It's just as unsettling as it looks.
• The Game Over screen in the console game. You get a nice shot of the Other Mother caressing Coraline as her body slowly falls limp and her button eyes start doing their work. The screen is pitch-black with the words STAY FOREVER superimposed in a large, creepy font. Unlike the other stories, this is 100% YOUR FAULT. You failed, and the game won't let you off the hook. Then, for an extra boot to the nuts, Coraline herself comments each time you fail. She sounds so utterly defeated.
  "Some things are not as they seem."
  "Some doors...should not be opened."
  "Do not go through the door."
• In chapter 2, you interact with a picture of the Other Mother and do some fun vandalism to the picture. The picture suddenly turns into an angry ghost figure, before turning back into the original picture of the Other Mother.
• The egg-stirring minigame. It seems perfectly fine until you complete it and the yellow yolk suddenly takes on the shape of the Beldam's hand.
• The pancake minigame. The Other Mother will gladly toss pancakes at you to catch with your plate. There are also bugs and worms to avoid, though. Where did she get the pancake batter from? A sewer?
• The beginning of chapter 3, "What's Wrong Wybie?" Coraline and Wybie suddenly find themselves in a dark, creepy forest. From the word "go", something is clearly wrong with Wybie. He's becoming increasingly unsettled and nervous. A disembodied voice calls out for him and he runs away into the darkness. After following him, avoiding deadly rats out to kill you, you reach Wybie in a crouched fetal position. He looks up, revealing that his eyes have become buttons. Suddenly a sickening outstretched ghost hand reaches out of a nearby hole, grabs Wybie by the head, and pulls him into the hole screaming as Coraline looks on in abject horror.
• Remember the rats from the movie? They're back. They're common Mooks that come with glowing red eyes, and they're out for blood. To make matters worse, they also start to appear in the barn later in the game. The implications are up to you.

---