ParaNorman

Plot

In the small town of Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts, Norman Babcock is an 11-year-old outcast who speaks with the dead, including his late paternal grandmother and various ghosts in town. Almost no one believes him and he is isolated emotionally from his family while being looked down upon by his own peers around the school. Neil Downe, an overweight boy who is also bullied, finds in Norman a kindred spirit. After rehearsing a school play commemorating the town's execution of a witch three centuries ago, the boys are confronted by Norman's estranged and seemingly deranged great-uncle, Mr. Prenderghast, who tells Norman that he soon must take up his regular ritual to protect the town. Soon after this encounter, Mr. Prenderghast dies of a heart attack.

During the official performance of the school play, Norman has a nightmarish vision of the town's past in which he is pursued through the woods by townsfolk on a witch hunt, embarrassing himself and leading to a heated argument with his paranoid father Perry, who later grounds him. His mother Sandra tells him that his father's manner is stern because he is afraid for him. The next day, Norman sees Prenderghast's spirit who tells him that the ritual must be performed with a certain book before sundown that day; then making him "swear" to complete the task, Prenderghast's spirit is set free and crosses over. Norman is at first reluctant to go because he is scared but his grandmother tells him it is all right to be scared as long as he does not let it change who he is. Norman sets off to retrieve the book from Prenderghast's house (having to take it from his corpse).

He then goes to the graves of the five men and two women who were cursed by the witch, but finds that the book is merely a series of fairy tales. Alvin, a school bully who always picks on Norman, arrives and prevents Norman from reading the story before sundown. Norman attempts to continue reading from the book, to no effect. A ghostly storm resembling the witch appears in the air, summoning the cursed dead to arise as zombies, who chase the boys along with Neil, Norman's 17-year-old sister Courtney, and Neil's older brother Mitch, down the hill and into town. Having realized that the witch was not buried in the graveyard, Norman contacts classmate Salma (who tells them to access the Town Hall's archives for the location of the witch's unmarked grave) for help. As the kids make their way to the Town Hall, the zombies are attacked by the citizenry. During the riot, Norman and his companions break into the archives but cannot find the information they need. As the mob moves to attack Town Hall, the witch storm appears over the crowd. Norman climbs the Hall's tower to read the book, in a last-ditch effort to finish the ritual, but the witch strikes the book with lightning, hurling Norman from the tower and deep into the archives.

Voice cast

Blithe Hollow townspeople are voiced by Kirk Baily, Cam Clarke, Lara Cody, Eddie Frierson, Rif Hutton, Edie Mirman and David Zyler.

Production

The idea of the film came from Chris Butler, who, realizing that zombie films often contained a degree of social commentary, thought making such a movie for kids could help express the challenges kids face growing up.

Production of the stop-motion animation feature took place at Laika's studio in Hillsboro, Oregon. The film was in production for three years, with the animating stage of production lasting about two years and beginning in late 2009. Rather than using traditional 3-D format cameras, the studio had sixty Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR cameras film the movie. Advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy created the campaign for the film. ParaNorman is the first-ever stop-motion film to use full-color 3-D printers for replacement animation. Laika's previous film Coraline had pioneered and popularized the use of black and white 3-D printers, which sped up puppet production considerably and allowed the team to make the large number of puppet faces required for the film. "Quite often it's the stop-motion movies that are more out there," co-director Fell told The New York Times. "They're a little quirkier, they're a little harder to pin down."

The final fight around the film's third act twist villain, Aggie Prenderghast, was a blend of stop motion, CGI effects, and hand-drawn animation. While her body is mostly stop-motion animated, her hair and dress are more grounded in VFX as her hair was exampled from studying one of the concept artists of the film by blowing ink to create a Tesla Coil effect around the hand-drawn feel of her rage. Other VFX used in the film from the storm to the angry mob was all done by Laika's in-house VFX department, making storms out of cotton and putting those visuals in the computer to the crowd shots that took over 100 or 200 background characters to produce with some still in stop motion by hand.

Soundtrack

Jon Brion composed the film's score, and an accompanying soundtrack album was released on August 14, 2012. Bits of other music appear in the film, including the theme music from Halloween, the Donovan song "Season of the Witch" (sung by the school play cast) and "Fix Up, Look Sharp" by British rapper Dizzee Rascal. "Little Ghost", a White Stripes song from their 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan, plays at the end, over character cards identifying the main cast. However, one track in the film, an updated version of "Aggie Fights", was not included in the soundtrack.

Release

Home media

ParaNorman was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on November 27, 2012. A new edition from Shout! Factory under license from Laika was released on Blu-ray on September 14, 2021, and later on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on December 13, 2022.

Other media

Video game

A video game called ParaNorman: 2-Bit Bub was made for iOS.

ParaNorman: The Thrifting

ParaNorman: The Thrifting is a computer animated horror comedy short film directed by Laika's principal character designer Thibault LeClercq (who designed Mitch's boyfriend Luca in June 2025 after the film's release), and written by film director Chris Butler who executive produced the short with producer and CEO Travis Knight, based on the characters from the film by Butler and Sam Fell.

The short brings back Anna Kendrick, who voiced Courtney in the film, along with new actors such as Finn Wolfhard while Brayden Gleave and Beckett Maillard voices Norman and Neil than the original actors. Produced from Laika in association with Passion Pictures, the short was released in promotion to the re-release of the main film in October 2025.

The short opens up with Norman and Courtney walking to Ye Olde Grimporium to find a Halloween costume this year. While Courtney flirts with a moody shop clerk, Chad, Norman starts searching for a costume before bumping into his friend Neil. Finding a strange mask, the lights went out as a supernatural entity chases them around the shop. However, it turns out the entity is only a spiritual ghost kid named Edward who wants his mask back from Norman, thinking everything in the store is his. Fighting over the mask, Edward's mother, who's also a spiritual ghost, interrupts this and takes Edward away while grounding him even on a school night. The store is restored from Edward's spiritual influence but Norman decides he doesn't want a costume, leaving the mask on a table. Chad kicks the boys and Courtney out and locks the store for tonight. As they leave, Norman takes one last look at Edward above before leaving while Courtney calls Mitch about Chad.

Brayden Gleave as Norman Babcock

Beckett Maillard as Neil Downe

Anna Kendrick as Courtney Babcock

Finn Wolfhard as Chad

Kaden Stoneking as Edward

Amanda Sykes as Edward's mother

In June 2025, Laika announced at the Annecy of a re-release of their film ParaNorman with company Fathom Entertainment along with a CGI-animated short follow-up by as part of their 20th anniversary of the studio. Anna Kendrick reprise her role while Finn Wolfhard was cast as Chad while newcomers, Brayden Gleave and Beckett Maillard, replaces Kodi Smit-McPhee and Tucker Albrizzi as Norman and Neil. On October 9, the trailer was posted from Laika's YouTube channel with a first look at the short being more stylized like the credits of the original film.

Reception

Critical response

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives ParaNorman an approval rating of 89% based on 189 reviews, and an average score of 7.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Beautifully animated and solidly scripted, ParaNorman will entertain (and frighten) older children while providing surprisingly thoughtful fare for their parents." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on 33 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Justin Chang of Variety wrote in his review, "Few movies so taken with death have felt so rudely alive as ParaNorman, the latest handcrafted marvel from the stop-motion artists at Laika." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter said, "It has its entertaining moments, but this paranormal stop-motion animated comedy-chiller cries out for more activity."

Box office

ParaNorman earned $56 million in North America, and $51.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $107.1 million. The film premiered in Mexico on August 3, 2012, opening in second place with box office receipts of $2.2 million, behind The Dark Knight Rises. For its opening weekend in North America, the film placed third, with receipts of $14 million, behind The Expendables 2 and The Bourne Legacy. Travis Knight, head of the studio that produced the film, believed the box office total was fine, but did not live up to his expectations.

Gay character

The film has drawn attention for the revelation in its final scenes that supporting character Mitch is gay, making him the first openly gay character in a mainstream animated film. Nancy French of National Review Online suggested that the film could lead parents "to answer unwanted questions about sex and homosexuality on the way home from the movie theater." Conversely, Mike Ryan of The Huffington Post cited Mitch's inclusion as one of the reasons why ParaNorman is "remarkable". Co-director Chris Butler said that the character was explicitly connected with the film's message: "If we're saying to anyone that watches this movie don't judge other people, then we've got to have the strength of our convictions." In 2013, ParaNorman was the first-ever PG-rated movie nominated by GLAAD in its annual GLAAD Media Awards, but lost to The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Future

Proposed television series

In 2017, animator Ila Solomon posted test footage for a ParaNorman television spin-off. The series would have used practical sets, but all the characters would have been rendered in CGI made to look like stop motion. Not much information was given, but it was apparent that the show did not get picked up.