Enchanting, engaging and downright eerie, you need only check out the calibre of those involved to figure that MirrorMask will drag you through the looking glass. The screenplay is by Neil Gaiman, author of the seductively dreamscaped Sandman comics and such fabulist novels as Anansi Boys. Co-written and directed by Dave McKean, Gaiman’s regular inker, with creature effects provided by the Henson Creature Workshop, the film momentarily recalls any number of spectacular rites-of-passage fantasies – The Wizard Of Oz, Labyrinth and Spirited Away all come to mind – while not being quite like anything you’ve ever seen before.
15-year-old Helena (Leonidas), the wayward heroine of the piece, lives in an eternally overcast Brighton, where her parents (Brydon and McKee) struggle to keep their economically unviable circus afloat. Following a particularly hormonal teenage strop, Helena learns her mother may be gravely ill. Guilty and in the throes of a feverish dream, the girl finds herself on a nerve-wrecking yellow brick road odyssey through a strange parallel universe of masked doppelgangers engulfing darkness, roaming mechanoids and books that fly back to the library should you question their worth.
Fans of Studio Ghibli’s girl-centric coming-of-age fables will recognise the wonderland territory and Ms. Leonidas puts in a fiercely sparky performance as the decidedly manga-fied young protagonist.
The visuals, meanwhile, are, well, all we would expect. A dazzling fusion of live action, puppetry and computer animation perfectly recreates Mc Kean’s macabre aesthetic, though there’s something of Guy Maddin or the Quay brothers in the spookily tottery presentation.
How they managed it on a budget reported to be £3 million and a bag of magic beans is anyone’s guess.