Two boys are lost in an endless wood filled with eccentric characters, magic, danger, and THE BEAST in Patrick McHale’s perfect autumnal animated series Over the Garden Wall, from 2014.
It’s Fall, y’all! It’s time for one of my favorite autumnal/Halloween traditions (and I have many! I live for it! My house is Halloween-all-year-round in decoration): watching Patrick McHale’s Over the Garden Wall.
The 10-part animated series has become a yearly watch with my wife, and now we’ve enlisted o33ur four-year-old into the event. It’s horror, but gateway horror, a perfect peering into the darkness of The Unknown for little ones. We split it up over a series of evenings, watching one 10-minute episode each time; for those who do the math, it’s about an hour and forty minutes total.
Over the Garden Wall is a story after my own heart. It’s delightfully weird, with a wide cast, a multitude of small stories building to a whole, with a strange little heart, strong humor, just enough utterly twisted outlook, and amazing animation. Over the Garden Wall has that warm feeling of autumn rising, leaves darkening and falling, the smell of pumpkins and serenity, and a solid dash of horror. It’s a warm hug of a miniseries I love to revisit.
It’s a celebration of American folk horror, Americana, and the history of filmed animation. It’s a lite-horror comic pastiche of a collection of styles of art, characters, and all-around madness. Nathaniel Hawthorne may be the largest draw, questioning what’s in the darkness of the woods of New England. But one can see Mark Twain, Appalachian & Lovecraftian Horror, 20s/30s Aesop Fables and Fleischer cartoons, and all those awesome Halloween Americana postcards of the early part of the last century. And more than a little Dante (after all, we have a guide named Beatrice), even if he was an Italian from 500 years ago, not American at all. Influences come from all over, adding a melting pot of madness as Wirt, Greg, Beatrice, and a cast of oddballs come and go as the set tries to find their way out of the dark woods and weirdness. Everyone here is insane, and I love it.
Fantastic characters and characterizations populate the autumnal world of The Unknown, giving a spark of life and making each segment just as memorable as the last. Most of the cast of characters is insane in some way, without being over the top and overwhelming. Elijah Wood continues his “I love weird stuff” in his voicing of Wirt; he’s perfect in selling the unsure and nervous young teen trying to find his place, and get the heck out of wherever he is. His brother Greg, brought to life by Collin Dean, is a chaos gremlin on non-sequieters (without feeling “ooh I’m so random!” annoyance) and frog-naming. Melanie Lynsky is perfectly snarky as Beatrice the Bluebird. And check this out for a great voice cast: Christopher Lloyd, Shirley Jones, Bebe Newworth, Tom Lennon, John Cleese in two roles, and TIM FREAKIN CURRY!
McHale, who went on to co-write Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, provides much to dig into; the story has a true heart. It’s a rich tableau of styles and methods. Of deeper meanings and metaphors. Love, death, finding family, taking charge of life, facing fears, curses, ghosts, and more. Each episode has a full arc and its own method of horror, humor, and Americana. I dare not truly give away, but it’s filled with surprises and humor as Wirt comes across an insane tea magnate, more than one witch in the woods, a steamboat of unexpectant voyagers, a school for animals, and an inn of stereotypes (The art in this one specifically is an astounding throwback). Did I mention the awesome songs and music score from The Blasting House?
And, of course, the Pumpkin People. An early episode, “Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee,” really sets the tone of the show after the plot setup of The Beast and the “where are we” question. Beautiful animation and design in a surprising story. I love it so much, a print of the pumpkin people is above my son’s bed, and I have an enamel pin on my lapel of Enoch.
It’s gorgeous animation all around. The hand-painted (or looks like so) backgrounds provide a peaceful beauty. Prints of the backgrounds could be up in our grandma’s house without batting an eye. It moves with ease and has fantastic, varied designs. Although a coincidence, the third episode’s main human character design looks like Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant, a webcomic with a similar outlook of intelligent, literary insanity. Check that out. The animals in that episode are akin to Busy Town, which my son noted this year.
Over the Garden Wall is one of my favorite things ever. If you’ve seen it, it’s o99999ne of yours. If you haven’t, watch it now and join us. (to quote Enoch in Pottsfield, “Oh, you’ll join us someday. Everyone does, eventually.”)
And that’s a rock fact.