No fear ... it’s a family-friendly zombie film

 
P32 ZOMBIE CLAW
Louise Jury13 September 2012

Two British film-makers have made a scary zombie animation for children, saying too many family-friendly movies play it safe.

Sam Fell, 46, and Chris Butler, 38, release ParaNorman this week, backed by the Laika studio that made Oscar-nominated Coraline.

It tells the story of an 11-year-old boy, Norman Babcock, who defies bullies to become a small town hero by defeating an uprising of zombies, thanks to his emotional intelligence and an ability to talk to the dead. The two directors said they hoped to do what many children’s films fail to do — show grit in tackling, with humour, serious issues such as bullying.

Butler, a Liverpudlian now based in Oregon who also wrote the film, said there was room to be more challenging and irreverent in looking at children’s issues.

Even the most popular youngsters have their moments of feeling the outsider, he said: “At 11, many kids don’t quite know how to fit in. You don’t have to be weird to know what that’s like.”

While scary, the film is not “a horror movie for kids”, he added. “It offers a resolution. The monsters are defeated.”

Fell, who lives in Kew and has an eight-year-old son, Vincent, pointed to literature to show what is possible: “If you look at children’s fiction, in Grimm’s fairy tales or Roald Dahl, they go to dark places.” He said the intense moments are punctuated by naughty jokes that children love.

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