RANKED

Every LAIKA Movie, Ranked

By Matt Oakes · October 19, 2026

Since 2009, the Oregon-based animation studio LAIKA has released five stop-motion features, each one handcrafted frame by frame over years of painstaking work, and every one of them earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. Six directors have brought them to the screen: Henry Selick (Coraline), Chris Butler and Sam Fell (ParaNorman), Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi (The Boxtrolls), LAIKA CEO Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) and Butler again on Missing Link. Each is a standalone story, so there’s no required watch order, though going chronologically shows just how far the studio’s craft has come. Box office has never quite matched the acclaim (Coraline remains the studio’s biggest hit at roughly $125 million worldwide, while Missing Link flopped despite winning a Golden Globe), but few studios command this kind of loyalty from critics and animation fans.

Coraline is still LAIKA’s best, and ParaNorman lands last, which says more about the studio’s really dependable batting average than any lack of quality with their “lower” tier entries. Coming next: Travis Knight’s Wildwood opens in theaters October 23, 2026, and it will join this list once I’ve seen it. Here’s every LAIKA movie, ranked.

Quick list:

Coraline (2009)
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
The Boxtrolls (2014)
Missing Link (2019)
ParaNorman (2012)

5. PARANORMAN (2012)

Paranorman (2012) still
Last place here says more about LAIKA’s batting average than about this ghoulish valentine to ’80s horror. Norman, an outcast kid who can talk to the dead, is the only one who can stop a centuries-old witch’s curse from raising zombies in his sleepy Massachusetts town. Equal parts John Carpenter and John Hughes, it’s funny, spooky and surprisingly moving in its final act, a story about bullying and empathy disguised as a monster movie.

4. MISSING LINK (2019)

Stop-motion has been around since nearly the invention of cinema itself, the first usage of the animation technique employed in the 1897 film The Humpty Dumpty Circus.

Though not resting with the top-tier Laika efforts, Missing Link is breathtaking proof about the evils of consolidating style: in the age of selfsame CGI-animation, something this devilishly detailed bears fruit of singularly unique beauty. Kids and adults alike will swoon.▶ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

3. THE BOXTROLLS (2014)

Isaac Hempstead Wright (Game of Thrones) is Eggs, so named because the box that clothes his is an old eggs box. This is SOP in Boxtroll world. A squat-faced troll with a high heel on his box is called “Shoe”. Oil Can has an oil can on his box as Fish’s box, you guessed it, has a doodle of a fish skeleton. Blink and you’ll miss the troll named “Fragile.”

But that’s because this time around, Laika has moved the focus onto the characters, who look better realized than ever before. They’re much less choppy, almost to the point of appearing to be the work of CGI. Surprisingly in this case, with more precision comes more charm.▶ Watch on Hulu · Read the full review

2. KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS (2016)

If there was ever any doubt that the circle of awesome that began with Coraline, Paranorman and The Boxtrolls would be broken, breathe relief. First-time director Travis Knight has led the masterful animators at Laika to victory once more with Kubo and the Two Strings.

Kubo and the Two Strings is animation perfected; voiced with great nuance, divinely animated and rippled with decadent thematic elements far exceeding its PG-rating, this is the kind of emotionally rich cinematic achievement that only great animated film seem able to deliver.▶ Watch on Hulu · Read the full review

1. CORALINE (2009)

LAIKA’s first feature remains its crown jewel. Adapted from Neil Gaiman’s novella by Henry Selick, Coraline follows a bored, neglected girl (Dakota Fanning) who discovers a tiny door to a mirror world where everything is better: the food, the garden, the doting Other Mother…provided she lets them sew buttons over her eyes of course. Gorgeously handcrafted and genuinely creepy, it’s the rare kids’ movie that trusts children to be scared, and it set the template for everything the studio has made since.