TORONTO - The ghosts of '80s films past run wild through the 3D animated feature "ParaNorman," a supernatural coming-of-age tale that takes as many cues from the work of John Hughes as it does John Carpenter's.

So say directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell, who set about to craft a zombie movie for kids that provides chills, thrills and giggles in equal measure.

"I grew up watching horror movies as a kid, I loved them, they made me who I am today," Butler declares during a recent stop in Toronto to promote the spirited adventure.

"But then it very quickly became a mix of other movies I grew up watching and loved as well, like 'The Goonies,' 'Ghostbusters' and TV shows like 'Scooby Doo.' So it all kind of started to get mixed together."

The monster mash is centred on 11-year-old misfit Norman, voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee, a lonely kid who can see and communicate with ghosts, whether he wants to or not.

His strange ability has made him a target for bullies at school, especially the big-boned blockhead Alvin, voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

It also fascinates his rotund classmate Neil, voiced by Tucker Albrizzi, who decides to become an unshakable hanger-on just as Norman is forced to contend with a 300-year-old curse that threatens their small town.

Butler, who also penned the script, says the story began brewing some 15 years ago. He chipped away at it even as he worked on other people's passion projects, including Henry Selick's adaptation of the Neil Gaiman character "Coraline," during the day. Butler also served as a storyboard artist on Tim Burton's macabre "Corpse Bride" and did design work on "The Tale of Despereaux."

The U.K. native makes his directorial debut with "ParaNorman" and peppers the project with homages to favourite low-budget gross-outs, including an outlandishly cheesy slasher sequence that kicks things off.

But he says the tongue-in-cheek horror tropes are all in service to dramatizing childhood anxieties everyone should be able to relate to, describing a neighbourhood bully that's just as terrifying as a zombie to an 11-year-old child.

"It would have been very easy to just do a parody of a horror movie and make it all lurid colours and things reaching out of the screen," says Butler, adding that he drew on his own childhood angst for the characters.

"But I always wanted it to have something to say and actually the best zombie movies always have social commentary — the zombies are always a metaphor for something and I thought, this could be interesting, using a zombie movie to explore social commentary from a kids' point of view."

Rounding out the voice cast is Casey Affleck as Neil's dim-and-beefy older brother Mitch, Anna Kendrick as Norman's self-involved sister Courtney, and Leslie Mann and Jeff Garlin as Norman's worried parents.

Their haunted hamlet is intricately detailed by animators who referred to "tons of photographs" and research to make each scene as realistic as possible, says Fell.

"All of that love and care and attention, I just think it immerses you in the film more," says Fell, who wrote and directed, "Flushed Away," and directed 2008's "The Tale of Despereaux."

The painstaking process was assisted by some high-tech gadgetry. A 3D printer allowed animators to create more than 31,000 facial parts that could be attached to 62 different characters as needed.

"It's like faxing an object — you create something in the computer and you print it out as an object. Which shouldn't happen — that's like sci-fi," says Butler.

It's a technique animators also employed in 2009's "Coraline," the first stop motion feature to come out of the Portland, Ore.-based production studio Laika.

But back then Butler notes they only had a black-and-white printer and had to hand-paint every piece after it was created.

For Laika's second feature, they were able to print in colour.

"That just opened up the world esthetically and also in terms of performance for our puppets," he says.

He credits advancing technology with raising the bar for animated film production in general.

"Even the materials that we used to make the puppets, everything is just getting more and more innovative," he says.

Still, there's a simplicity and artistry to stop motion that has survived technological advances, says Fell, distinguishing it from the increasingly impressive computer-generated fare that DreamWorks, Disney and Pixar excel at.

"Stop motion has been around forever, there's a simple magic to bringing puppets to life," he says.

"But now it's kind of expanding and become something brand new in a way. And it's kind of fun because in some ways this medium has been sleeping while CG has been wowing the world. It feels that things are gradually turning and that actually now this is surprising because people are kind of used to the CG."

Adding 3D just highlights those magical qualities, he adds, describing the end product as akin to peering into a dollhouse.

"Anyone remembers playing with toys," adds Butler. "Having a toy in your hand and imagining it come to life, that's basically what we're doing. But we're grown-ups."

"ParaNorman" opens Aug. 17.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2012