Lists · Movies

The 15 Best Animated Movies of 2021

We rank the best animated movies of 2021, celebrating the usual suspects as well as some unsung gems. From Pixar to Neon, it was a wild one.
Best Animated Movies
By  · Published on December 23rd, 2021

5. The Spine of Night

The Spine Of Night
RLJE Films

Directors Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King spent seven years creating The Spine of Night. Seven years! The ultra-violent rotoscoped adventure began as a loving homage to Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta, and Heavy Metal magazine but became a brutal task, almost as brutal as the content found within. Blissfully, the result was worth it.

The Spine of Night is a gnarly bruiser of a movie, centered around several murderous individuals scrambling for survival in a world that seemingly delights in digesting its inhabitants. Voicing the narrative’s fodder are cool cats like Patton Oswalt, Lucy LawlessBetty GabrielJoe Manganiello, and Richard E. Grant (in a role lightyear’s away from his character in Robin Robin). The Spine of Night is not for everyone, but for the folks it targets, it’s a film they’ll cherish forever.


4. Encanto

Best Animated Movies Encanto
Walt Disney Animation

Encanto shows us a family who built magic from nothing. The Madrigals fled violence and found a miracle, a candle that grants inhuman powers. Around this gift, a house is erected, and it communicates with the family through the clapping of planks and tiles. Everyone born within has a fantastical ability — except Mirabel. But when a darkness threatens to destroy their way of life, it’s Mirabel who sets out on the restorative journey.

Encanto trembles with music, LinManuel Miranda providing a rambunctious soundtrack, creating the therapeutic musical we all needed as the year blinked out. Walt Disney Animation launched numerous movies in 2021, and each exemplifies the artform’s capabilities, but Encanto fantastically cleared their previously established brilliance.

Every frame in this film shimmers with tangible detail. There are dishes on the screen that you’ll swear you can smell, the tactile experience matching Encanto‘s wholehearted humanity.


3. The Mitchells vs. The Machines

The Mitchells Vs The Machines
Netflix

The plot isn’t terribly sticky. A daughter and her father clash the night before she leaves for film school. He doesn’t understand her or her obsessions. She’s as equally clueless about him. Then the machines rise, and humanity’s days are threatened. The Mitchells must band together if they’re to save the planet from annihilation. Sure, okay, rad. What’s remarkable about The Mitchells vs. The Machines is the energy it throws into its visuals.

Director Mike Rianda takes an aggressive approach, seemingly attacking those members in the audience who share Papa Mitchell’s point of view. “Kids today, what is all this crap?” Every second in The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a howl. The gags come fast and faster. The jokes are pulled from every corner of pop culture, spoofing and celebrating simultaneously. No one person can catch or understand them all. It’s a breathtaking runtime that left me joyously exhausted.


2. Going Home

Best Animated Movies Going Home
Walt Disney Animation

The third and final Short Circuit on the list. Have I convinced you to watch these minis on Disney+ yet? I hope so.

In his introduction to Going Home, director Jacob Frey exclaims his enthusiasm for the initiative. These shorts can be anything you want them to be. Permission is given to sadness as much as it is happiness. Gosh, he really took that to heart.

Going Home stems from his specific emotional journey as a filmmaker. He’s been away from his hometown and family for five years, but every once in a while, he makes the trek back. When he does so, the town and the people have changed. In some cases, they’ve disappeared.

There are countless edits in this short. Each step Frey takes seemingly creates another cut and another jump in time. By the time he reaches his family’s front door, devastation strikes, and it reduced this viewer to a wet, soppy mess — accomplished in less than four minutes.


1. Flee

Best Animated Movies Flee
Neon

During the First Afghan Civil War, when the Mujahideen extended their power, Amin escaped his homeland. He eventually made his way to Copenhagen, where he met Jonas Poher Rasmussen. As their friendship grew, Amin revealed more and more of his harrowing, apocalyptic story. Years later, Rasmussen convinces Amin to expose that tale. But how do you convey the narrative beyond talking heads and grainy news footage? You animate it.

Flee is not just the best animated movie of 2021; it’s one of the year’s best movies, full stop. This singular telling literally illustrates the agony Amin’s family assumed so that some of them, not all of them, could simply continue. Rassmussen’s animated documentary is a deeply intimate work, probing a painful story from a willing but shaken subject.

Flee grants necessary access to a horrific occurrence that many pretend to understand through an absent-minded observation of the daily news. It drags you through Amin’s journey, and you will not be able to shake it by changing the channel or pressing stop. Rasmussen’s story lingers, enhancing everything you do afterward.

Pages: 1 2 3

Related Topics:

Brad Gullickson is a Weekly Columnist for Film School Rejects and Senior Curator for One Perfect Shot. When not rambling about movies here, he's rambling about comics as the co-host of Comic Book Couples Counseling. Hunt him down on Twitter: @MouthDork. (He/Him)