In the twee town of Cheesebridge, the inhabitants are obsessed by what they consider a menace: the boxtrolls, monsters who live in the sewers, coming out only at night in search of babies to eat. In the wake of their first victim’s disappearance, and with the authorization of the esteemed Lord Portley-Rind, Archibald Snatcher has set a curfew to protect citizens while the boxtrolls are hunted down. But Winnie, the neglected daughter of Lord Portley-Rind, is about to discover that behind the legend of monsters hides a sweet and peaceful community who has raised the famous baby as one of their own…

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Laika Studios has joined the big leagues, thanks to the wonderful Coraline and the extraordinary ParaNorman. The studio, specializing in frame-by-frame animation, is back with The Boxtrolls, adapted from Alan Snow’s novel “Here Be Monsters!”. It is the perfect pretext for creating yet another mad universe peopled with touching and surprising characters who live in a town that is almost ethereal and lost in the middle of a plain. The spectacular imagination used to create this world is needed to counterbalance a script that is again very classic and content to recycle a universal formula. The result is a kind of circus that is visually stunning, but dull behind the scenes. In a few years, after a few more successes in its pockets, Laika may just make that extra effort and meet its own potential. Until then, The Boxtrolls will do just fine.