What if they made a beautifully original children’s movie and it wasn’t necessarily appropriate for children?

That’s the case with “Coraline”: It’s animated. It’s about a little girl, voiced by underage icon Dakota Fanning. And it’s based on kid lit.

But though geared to tempt little ones, author Neil Gaiman’s eponymous source material is a horror story about a mother from hell. And because the stunning goth images are so effectively in your face, thanks to the idiosyncratic imagination and 3-D stop-motion stylings of director-screenwriter Henry Selick, the film’s dark themes come hauntingly to life.

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