30 Animated Movies That Are Not for Children

Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña’s Chilean horror animation The Wolf House is a stop motion of a different nature. The story is that of escaped cultist Maria, who hides out from her former cult members in a run-down and abandoned house. Here, she finds two pigs and raises them as her children, all the while a big bad wolf figure stalks their home outside, demanding to be let in. But her children grow larger and meaner and eventually become the manifestation of Maria’s fractured mental state, seeking to consume her once and for all.

The Wolf House takes the format of the children’s fairytale but twists it for an adult audience. And the scope of it is breathtaking, with an impressionist and surrealist approach that has characters and scenes morph through each other, and through mediums, as the film progresses. Faces and figures appear in objects and on walls, finding three-dimensional form as they enter and become their scenes, constantly changing, adapting, shifting, and responding to their environments. The picture’s characters, sequences, and action are conveyed through sculpture, paint, puppetry, and the manipulation of everyday objects, and just as soon as we’ve got a handle on one thing, it recedes into the next.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, the whole thing was filmed on a life-size set, taking five long years to complete. Just don’t expect the filmmakers to tell you what it’s really about.