It’s almost as if we took a venn diagram like the one shown below: In fact, she may well have never returned to the real world since the first time she visited the ‘other world’.Ī term that The Fangirl coined was that Coraline was trapped in a limbo in between the Beldam’s lair and the real world. The main point here is that Coraline never returned to the real world at the end of the movie. The fact that the last scenes perfectly reflect everything that Coraline desired to happen strongly suggests that she had not returned home and that the world and people around her were still under the influence of the Beldam as a way of keeping Coraline in the other world, in such a way that she wouldn’t even question it. Not only this but her family is laughing and joking around with one another, something else that hadn’t been happening beforehand. However, after the final confrontation, Coraline ‘returns home’ and the last we see of her is that she is outside with her parents and the neighbours, planting flowers and enjoying pizza. Through the whole film, Coraline desperately wants to do gardening with her parents but they always find excuses. To further back up the theory that Coraline never returned to the real world, everything seems too good to be true.
This suggests that Coraline is still in the other world because, as far as we are aware, the cat doesn’t/wouldn’t like to return to the other world after the final confrontation with the Beldam (or ‘Other Mother’) and it would make no sense for him to be returning there and thus, would make more sense if he was returning to the real world instead, meaning Coraline was in the other world. To consolidate this, in the final moments of the movie, the cat is shown to disappear into what can be presumed is a portal with a smug grin on his face (is that possible though, considering he’s a cat? I don’t know, we’ll go with it). To begin with, we must state the fact on which I will build up all of my theories – at the end of the movie, Coraline never returned to the real world. A lot of what I am going to be talking about today stems from her videos and I think they’re all absolutely amazing!Īfter binge watching these videos, I began to develop my own ideas about the film and I would love to share these theories with you.