A brain on the floor, a woman’s stiletto goes through it, a zombie is closing up, the woman screams.. That’s how Universal’s newest animation fest starts. So needless to say, I was hooked from the get-go.

Norman is a.. not-so-normal kid. He absolutely LOVES zombie flicks (who doesn’t, right?) and.. he can also see and talk to dead people. This makes his family very uncomfortable and believe this is just in Norman’s head. His classmates feel the same and are either scared of him or call him terrible names – so friends are not something common in Norman’s life, until Neil comes along. Neil is a positive boy who thinks Norman’s ability is just awesome, and is over the moon when he realises that through Norman he can finally see and play with his deceased dog again.One day Norman is approached by his crazy uncle, with whom his family doesn’t speak, and he tells Norman he needs to take over an annual ritual to keep the town from danger. Norman tries to ignore his apparently lunatic uncle, until the uncle dies and comes back as a ghost and again tries to convince Norman about his new responsibilities. It turns out his uncle had the same abilities as Norman and every year he reads from a book to keep an ancient ghost, from the time of witches, from destroying the whole town. However, things obviously don’t go as planned and all of a sudden Norman has a zombie gang on his hands, from whom he must protect the townspeople.

As I said, I was instantly hooked by this film, with a Henry Selick/Tim Burton kind of vibe, the visuals are absolutely stunning. With quirky characters and unusually designed stop motion is the best animation, bar none! The story is great, with a very unusual theme that, from time to time, was quite terrifying. I was at a screening with loads of kids and I was actually wondering how they took it, because the design of the zombies was excellent and it was more of a funny-scary animated film than anything else. The humour was INCREDIBLE and exactly what I like, so I LOL’d so many times, and I rarely do that in the cinema. My favourite joke was when Norman gets a text and first, his signal was the Halloween tune... and then Norman looks out the window sees Neil waiting for him in a hockey mask.. it was just perfect.

What I really enjoyed was all the different faces of the characters, they were far from the generic Pixar or Disney design, which we are used to seeing. All characters have weird features, just like normal people and my favourite is Neil’s older brother, Mitch. He looks the part of the popular football jock with a long face, fit body and crew cut, perfectly voiced by Casey Affleck, which also adds to the roundness of the character.

Paranorman really shows its edge when incorporating contemporaneity. For instance, when Norman is stuck in a house and everything goes pitch black, he takes up his cell phone to light his way, or the bully who has stretched ears. That for me is a big plus, just showing forward thinking in a funny way in animation.

All and all I loved it. As you might have guessed. I literally haven’t felt this satisfied with an animated feature since UP, Coraline and The Fantastic Mr Fox. I wasn’t bored for a second with any of the jokes, cool references and enticing visuals. The ending was quite beautiful and sad, when we find out the tragic reason as to why all of this was happening. But, of course, everything is sorted and you leave the cinema with a smile on your face. I can not say enough good stuff about Paranorman, I absolutely adored it and recommend everyone to run, not walk or shuffle, to see it.

Trailer!