The stop-motion animated dark fantasy horror film Coraline, has been popular since its 2009 release. As the years go on, the fans continue to theorize the movie and explain why certain events take place and how certain characters are the they they are. Director, Henry Stelick’s film has a cult-like following and fans are creating theories that are much darker and scarier than the film itself.
Before we can get into the fan theories of the movie Coraline, here are the main points of the plot.
Plot:
The movie follows Coraline Jones who has to adapt to moving from Pontiac, Michigan to the Pink Palace apartments in Ashland, Oregon. After the big move, her parents ignore her as they are working from home and “too busy” to pay her any attention. Wybie, who lives next door to the Pink Palace Apartments with his grandma, gives Coraline a ragdoll that looks identical to her, leading her to explore her house and find a small door with a brick wall behind it. That night, a jumping mouse leads her back to that door, now a portal leading to the Other World. In this Other World, she meets her doppelganger parents who have button eyes, pay her lots of attention, and give her all the things she could ever wish for.
Once she awakes, she is returned to the real world. That evening, Coraline’s Other Mother asks her to stay with her permanently, but in order to stay Coraline needs to sew buttons over her eyes. Coraline, horrified, goes to bed but remains in the Other World. When she tries to escape, the Other Mother entraps her in a mirror. This is where Coraline discovers the three ghost children and they share their stories about their souls being stolen by Other Mother. The ghost children tell her that Coraline can free them if she can retrieve the essences of their souls, which are trapped in the ‘eyes’ of the ghost children. This begins Coraline’s game with Other Mother. Iif Coraline can find the ‘eyes’ of these children before time is out, Other Mother will have to free her and the three ghost children. If Coraline is unsuccessful, she must let Other Mother sew buttons in her eyes. Coraline wins the battle, defeating Other Mother and saving the three ghosts.
This movie had fans thinking hard about the plot and how things all happened for a reason. These fan theories try to explain why the characters look certain ways, why things happened, why things are the way they were, etc.
Coraline Theory #1: Why Mr. Bobinsky is Blue
Mr. Bobinsky is Coraline’s Russian neighbor who has performing circus mice. He is unusual with an unsettling look that is completed by his blue hue. Reddit user BONKERS303 has a theory that Bobinsky was a liquidator of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed reactor design which resulted in a steam explosion and fires that released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment. Liquidator refers to the workers who entered areas designated as “contaminated” to help reduce the consequences of the explosion. Their tasks were to clean up the debris from around the reactor, decontamination, road building, etc. Bobinsky was thought to be a liquidator because he was seen wearing a medal on his chest that reads, “4A3C.” The medal is decorated with three droplets of blood which possibly indicate the level of radiation he was subjected to.
Coraline Theory #2: Spink & Forcible Knew About the Lost Children
Miss Spink & Miss Forcible are longtime renters at the Pink Palace apartments and the two women serve as unusual and unlikely helpers to Coraline. They give her a looking stone which allows Coraline to find the eyes of the ghost children. How would they know the use of this item if they were unaware of the ghost children? Fans speculate that the two women knew about the children and have seen this happen before. YouTuber The Fangirl theorizes that each date on the taffy jars that Miss Spink & Miss Forcible have correspond to a year that a child went missing. When the ghost children are seen on screen, their clothing matches a year that was shown on the jars. This is also why Coraline’s jar was not there yet as she was not taken quite yet. This theory would also explain why the two women’s attitudes were more relaxed as they have witnessed this before. The only disagreeable fact is that these women don’t look old enough to have witnessed all of the missing children, but it is possible that they don’t age at a normal rate.
Coraline Theory #3: Wybie’s Grandmother Trapped Coraline Intentionally
The Pink Palace apartment is owned by Wybie’s grandmother, in which she does not live there because her sister vanished in that house. She typically does not let other children go near or reside in the apartment due to her sister’s disappearance. This suggests that Wybie’s grandmother knew about Other Mother and her temptation to trap children. Despite Other Mothers’s sinister ideas, Wybie’s grandmother allows Coraline and her family to live in The Pink Palace. Why? Fans suggest that the grandmother wanted to save Wybie who just turned the age that her sister was when she disappeared. To ensure that Wybie would not be taken by Other Mother, she puts Coraline in a dangerous situation and makes her the target. The grandmother never talked to Coraline directly about the disappearance of her sister but rather talks about it at the end of the movie once Coraline experienced all of the trauma caused by Other Mother.
Coraline Theory #4: The Door Wasn’t the Only Portal
Throughout the movie, Coraline enters the other world through the secret door, but never comes out of it. Rather, when she sleeps she is entered back into the real world. This could mean that she never truly escaped Other Mothers’s trap. Near the end of the movie, the ghost children tell Coraline to throw away the key to the portal door so that Other Mother can’t get it. Although, if she really is trapped, the key could have been the resource to enter back into the real world but Coraline threw it down the well.
Another theory suggests that Other Mother might have gotten the key because the well could have served as another portal to a different world. Around the well were mushrooms that are referred to as the fairy ring. This allows anyone to access the other world, which could mean that Beldam might have gotten the keys back and can interfere with Coraline and her life.
Coraline Theory #5: Why Does Beldam Use Button Eyes?
Therorizer on YouTube suggests that when Other Mother got her first victim, she was lured the same way that Coraline was. Other Mother could not find enough energy to keep her illusions of the children’s Other Worlds up, so in fear of the Other World’s true nature being revealed, she sewed button eyes on the children so that they were unable to see. She then offered the children a deal that if she were to sew buttons into her eyes, she would be able to give them a permanent place in the Other World. This would mean that the children would be blind and could stay in Other Mother’s lair. This then allowed her to conserve her energy as she didn’t have to upkeep the look of each child’s Other World and instead could revert each world to its barren state in a white hexagonal room. As she fed off of each child’s life, she was able to gain energy and it started her cycle of capturing children, sewing buttons in their eyes, feeding off their energies, repeat. A theory created by The Fangirl proposes the idea that Other Mother eats the children’s life force in order to continue living. She feeds off of the love that the children have towards their mothers. Since Other Mother disguises herself as their mothers, she is able to feed off of that love. This explains how she has survived for so many decades, how she targets each child, and why she uses buttons for eyes.
Conclusion:
While these are only a few of the hundreds of Coraline fan theories, they are important to the culture of the movie. These theories spread the feelings each viewer has towards this mysterious film and cause fangroups to bond. Each year, the movie regains its popularity with more and more fan theories released, proving its importance to the movie.