Coraline's mother unlocks the mysterious drawing room door to reveal only a solid brick wall behind it.

Coraline follows a small shadowy shape through the dark house and finds the drawing room door standing ajar.

Home alone, Coraline retrieves the key and opens the drawing room door to find the brick wall completely gone.

Coraline enters the other world and meets a woman resembling her mother but taller, paler, and with black button eyes.

The other parents reveal that Coraline must allow them to sew black buttons into her eyes if she wants to stay forever.

When the other mother grabs Coraline's shoulder, Coraline touches the stone in her pocket and the other mother sharply recoils.

The black cat leads Coraline to the hallway mirror, where her two parents appear briefly, visibly trapped somewhere inside it.

Coraline's mother fogs the surface of the hallway mirror and writes 'HELP US' backward before both parents disappear.

Coraline packs apples and the holed stone, then enters the dark corridor with the cat to rescue her parents.

The other mother sends a rat to retrieve the only door key, then locks the door and pockets the key herself.

The other mother drags Coraline to the hallway mirror, opens it like a door, and locks her inside as punishment.

Coraline proposes a game to the other mother: find the ghost children's souls and her parents to win freedom.

Coraline tells the other mother her parents are behind the door, then throws the cat at her face and grabs the snow globe.

The ghost children's souls grasp Coraline's hands and lend her enough strength to pull the drawing room door shut.

Coraline spreads a tablecloth over the old well to disguise it and lures the other mother's severed hand into the trap using the key.

Coraline's story begins when she discovers a bricked-up door in her new home that one night opens into a parallel world. There she meets the other mother, a button-eyed creature who offers a perfect life in exchange for Coraline's eyes. When Coraline returns home to find her parents have been kidnapped, she bravely re-enters the other world to confront the other mother. Coraline proposes a dangerous game and uses her wit and the help of the black cat to fight for freedom. She escapes with her parents sealed safely in a snow globe, and ghostly allies help her shut the door behind her. One final threat remains as the other mother's severed hand pursues the key, but Coraline defeats it too with a clever trap at the old well.

The central journey from a mysterious door to a hard-won escape.

Coraline repeatedly tries to approach the black cat living around the house, but it always slips away from her.

Mr. Bobo leans close to Coraline and whispers that his mice have a message warning her not to go through the door.

Miss Spink reads the tea leaves in Coraline's cup and concludes with Miss Forcible's agreement that Coraline is in terrible danger.

Miss Spink digs through a jar of trinkets and presents Coraline with a stone that has a hole through the middle.

Coraline asks her mother for Day-Glo green gloves during school shopping, but her mother refuses and buys only gray uniforms.

Coraline meets the button-eyed other father, and the family sits down together to the most delicious meal she has ever eaten.

The other Mr. Bobo's rats emerge from under the bed, sing a creepy song, and perform a dancing pyramid formation.

Coraline watches the other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible peel out of their older bodies to reveal younger, button-eyed selves on stage.

Walking away from the other house, Coraline reaches a shapeless, foggy nothingness where the constructed world simply runs out.

Three ghost children trapped behind the mirror warn Coraline that the other mother stole their hearts, souls, and lives.

Coraline finds the other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible fused inside a wall sac on the theater stage and pries out a glowing soul.

The other mother coughs a key up from her own throat and hands it to Coraline to search the empty flat.

The black cat drops a dead rat at Coraline's feet, allowing her to retrieve the final glowing soul marble.

Coraline's parents gently wake her from the couch, cheerful and completely unaware they were ever trapped inside the snow globe.

Mr. Bobo tells Coraline the mice say that all is good and that she is their savior.

Before Coraline ever steps through the door, her neighbors plant the seeds of warning and protection — the mice caution her against the door, and Miss Spink and Miss Forcible provide a lifesaving stone. Coraline's first visit to the other world is filled with wonder: a delicious meal, a rat circus, and a dazzling theater performance where the other neighbors shed their older selves. As danger escalates, the other mother's true nature is exposed through the ghost children's haunting testimony and the grotesque creatures the other neighbors have become. Coraline's hunt for the lost souls brings her to a fused creature inside an egg sac and a hollow rat-man upstairs, with the cat providing a critical save at the last moment. Once home, Coraline's parents are blissfully unaware of their ordeal, and only when Mr. Bobo's mice declare all is good does the full weight of victory finally feel real.

The allies, warnings, and wonders that shaped Coraline's adventure.

Back in bed after the shadowy figure's visit, Coraline dreams of small black shapes singing a strange and unsettling song.

In the other world, the black cat speaks to Coraline and reveals it is the same single cat from her real home.

Coraline spends an entire day and a sleepless night alone, feeding herself after her parents fail to return home.

Coraline phones the police to report her missing parents, but the officer dismisses her and suggests she ask for hot chocolate.

Coraline tells the cat about her father facing a wasp nest a second time, explaining that bravery means acting despite fear.

The cat advises Coraline to challenge the other mother to a game, warning that the other mother will not play fairly.

The other father lets slip that the other mother spent a long time creating the world and waiting for Coraline to arrive.

The other mother startles Coraline at the hallway mirror because the other mother casts no reflection whatsoever in the glass.

A ghost child whispers to Coraline in the dark mirror room, telling her to look through the hole in the stone.

Using the stone, Coraline spots a glowing red orb and pulls it free — the first ghost child's soul hidden inside a marble.

The deformed other father warns Coraline the other mother has ordered him to hurt her, then slowly begins to attack.

The other Mr. Bobo admits he is hollow, then collapses entirely as rats flood out of his suit and scatter.

Coraline realizes the other mother can only copy and distort things that already exist and cannot create anything truly original.

Coraline realizes the snow globe on the drawing room mantelpiece must be where the other mother has hidden her parents.

In a dream, the freed ghost children thank Coraline but warn that the other mother's severed hand is still searching for her.

From an opening nightmare to a final dream warning, this pool traces the inner moments that shifted Coraline's understanding of the world she had stumbled into. Early revelations — the speaking cat, the nothingness beyond the world's edges, and the other mother's missing reflection — expose the constructed and sinister nature of the other world. When her parents vanish, Coraline faces a defining choice, and her retelling of her father's wasp encounter crystallizes her own understanding of bravery. The ghost children's advice to look through the stone proves transformational, unlocking her ability to find the hidden souls and press toward victory. As Coraline pieces together the truth about the snow globe while the other Mr. Bobo falls apart around her, she gains the knowledge she needs to face the other mother. Even after the escape, a dream warns her the danger is not over, setting up the final confrontation with the severed hand.