There’s Nothing Scarier In ‘Wendell & Wild’ Than The Spotlight It Shines On The Very Real School-to-Prison Pipeline

Wendell & Wild, Netflix’s new stop motion animated film from Henry Selick and Jordan Peele, arrived last week with rave reviews from critics and viewers alike. The film revolves around a character named Kat, a girl reeling from the childhood trauma of her parents death, who makes a deal with demons to bring her parents back from beyond the grave. Despite being primarily filmed using stop-motion animation, the whole production feels incredibly human.

One of the biggest themes of the film involves the “school-to-prison pipeline.” It is defined by the ACLU as:

“A disturbing national trend wherein youth are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal legal systems. Many of these youth are Black or Brown, have disabilities, or histories of poverty, abuse, or neglect, and would benefit from additional supports and resources. Instead, they are isolated, punished, and pushed out.”

This is the struggle that Wendell & Wild‘s Kat goes through as a child; a sequence in the film shows how Kat went to a group home after her parents’ death, and endured bullying at her new school. In an act of frustration, she pushed her bully down the stairs, at which point she was sentenced by a judge to prison time. We don’t know exactly how long she was in prison, but it appears she spent enough time in there to grow from a sad, traumatized child into an angry teenager that’s been hardened by the system (despite being enrolled in a program called Break-the-Cycle). What makes this scene so perfect is how it utilizes a drawn, 2-D animation style, which differentiates from the stop motion used in the rest of the film; this helps show Kat’s past in a literal different light (green specifically), one where she wasn’t necessarily given a choice, nor any real coping mechanisms. It shows that Kat’s actions were responses to the lack of support she was given and the way others treated her; the leader of the group home has dollar signs in his eyes to signify that her life is only worth the money that the state will give them.

But this is all stemming from a much larger problem: the financial state of Rust Bank. Much of the plot centers around the mysterious Rust Bank brewery fire, which caused the town to essentially be demolished, enabling the private prison industry to become the main source of income for the town. The proceeding scene shows Siobhan, Kat’s (or Kay-Kay, as Siobhan refers to her) new classmate, the daughter of the CEOs of private prison company Klaxon Korp. learning the truth about what the prisons actually do. The transcription of the scene is below:

Siobhan: Mummy, Daddy, I know the truth about your prisons.

Lane Klaxon: And what is that, Siobhan?

Siobhan: Well, you make a pile of money for every prisoner you take. So you pack them in like sardines, provide crap food, crap medical, dangerous conditions, and zero rehabilitation.

Lane: I am proud of you dear.

Irmgard Klaxon: That’s our business model, exactly.

Siobhan: Don’t some people deserve a second chance? Like Kay-Kay?

Irmgard: Oh we love those Break-The-Cycle kids.

Lane: Going to bus them in by the hundreds to your school.

Irmgard: Then, we make it impossible for them to succeed there. And when they fail…

Lane: Our new prison will be waiting with open arms.

As the Klaxons state, the goal of private prisons is to make money, not to rehabilitate inmates (let alone helping them flourish). Teenagers and children risk becoming part of an ongoing cycle by which they will never be able to leave, as they are given no resources to succeed. Even programs like Break-the-Cycle won’t help.

By the end of the film, Wendell & Wild becomes a film about community, the ability to come together and support each other, which causes the demolition of the new private prison. Still, the most haunting part of the film doesn’t come from a jump scare, nor any of Selick and Peele’s gorgeously creepy characters. No, it’s the ugly truth of the private prison industry and the harsh reality of our world that will keep you up at night. Nonetheless, the lessons that the film teaches might just be the thing we need today, especially when our future feels incredibly bleak and scary.