Awards Season is in full swing, and I'm personally trying to catch up on the 2025 Oscar nominees. That's what led me to watching the new Dreamworks flick The Wild Robot, which is streaming with a Peacock subscription). The Best Animated feature nominee was a great watch, with action and tender emotionality at its heart. And while I really enjoyed the movie, I also found it thoroughly terrifying for a number of reasons.
To be clear, a lot of these issues have largely to due with phobias of my own. So if I seem like a crazy person, that's probably why. Specifically, an irrational fever I have of possums, as well as raccoons and skunks. All three of these creatures go bump in the night, and are heavily featured throughout The Wild Robot. And that's saying nothing of the thrills that are actually included in the 2024 animated movie.
Throughout the movie's 102-minute runtime, Lupita Nyong'o's titular character Roz interacts with a variety of woodland creatures on the island she found herself on. But while Mark Hamill's Grizzly Bear Thorn was meant to be the scariest, I found myself much more freaked out by the smaller animals walking around on four legs. That includes a notable scene where Roz is attacked by a vicious group of raccoons, which is basically what I think is going to happen to me any time I walk past one of them in my day to day life.
Nothing scares me more than possums, and unfortunately for me they're certified scene stealers in the new Dreamworks film. The Wild Robot's cast includes the great Catherine O'Hara as a mother Possum named Pinktail. She and her various babies are utterly hilarious throughout the movie, engaging in gallows humor and trying (and failing) to successfully play dead.
Given my phobia of possums, this made The Wild Robot full of unintended jump scares for myself. And more confusingly, there was usually a solid laugh that came afterward. Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions.
Of course, the movie itself actually had plenty of scary moments. The subject and threat of death seemed to looming over Kit Connor's Brightbill. CinemaBlend's Wild Robot review overwhelmingly praised the movie, which is actually pretty action packed. So while I might have streamed the movie on a sleepy Sunday morning, I was treated to way more thrills than I could have anticipated... especially from the possums, raccoons, and skunks. Phobias don't usually make logical sense, although I have to assume that someone out there had a similar experience watching the Oscar nominee.
The Wild Robot is streaming on Peacock, and we'll have to see if it manages to snatch an Academy Award on March 2nd. Let's just hope Academy voters don't have the same phobia as me.
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