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‘Wildwood’ Combines Masterful Animation with Incredible Ambition
Travis Knight’s new stop-motion animated fantasy is one of the best films of 2026 so far
In the opening chapter of Shoe Dog by Phil Knight — the man behind Nike and the father of Wildwood director Travis Knight — he speaks briefly on the background of his home state of Oregon (also the setting of the early parts of Wildwood!), touching on how it was founded exclusively by those who were willing to make an extremely difficult trek in order to discover it, how anybody who was not strong enough or brave enough to make such a trip was left behind. Wildwood, in many ways, works directly as a reversal of this or perhaps as an affirmation of the idea that those who did actually manage to make it to Oregon were brave and adventurous, born with a pioneering spirit held in their blood.
The film begins by introducing its teenaged protagonist Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), her baby brother Mac (touchingly played by Travis’s own son Arthur, in keeping with those family connections) and her parents (Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine) as they live a quaint life quietly reminiscent of the life of Leonardo DiCaprio and Chase Infiniti’s characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another from last year. Prue’s parents are certainly hippie-esque, Prue herself…
