Meanwhile, his parents are growing concerned at his insistence that the ghost of his late grandma is still floating around the house. “She’s not in a better place,” Norman tells his father. “She’s in the living room.” ParaNorman is beautifully timed to coincide with Universal’s centenary, and since it’s from Laika, the makers of Coraline, its macabre air and cheerful references to classic horror chime perfectly with the studio’s monster movie golden age. There are gags here that hark back to everything from John Carpenter’s Halloween to Night Of The Living Dead. The movie even opens with a deliciously-wrought pastiche of a grindhouse zombie flick, complete with scratched film, poor framing and an invasive boom mike which only briefly causes its shapely scream queen to break character. In fact, ParaNorman evokes that wonderful, forbidden feeling of watching horror movies you’re too young to see so perfectly that I almost wish more of the film had been devoted to this topic. “What were you watching?” a distracted father (voiced by Jeff Garlin) asks Norman, to which he replies nonchalantly, “Oh, sex and violence.” That they’re all such stereotypes is obviously all part of the horror fun, but the supporting cast spend rather too much time bickering and making dim observations to properly entertain. Fortunately, Norman’s a lovely little character (charmingly voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), and so too are the invading zombies; typical of so many artists, ParaNorman’s creators appear to have had the most fun designing and animating these rubber-limbed ghouls, who totter about the place with sad faces and rotting brains full of dreadful secrets. As you’d expect from the makers of Coraline, ParaNorman looks lovely. The character designs aren’t necessarily better than that earlier film, but there’s an attention to detail and craft at work here that’s wonderful to behold; just look at how the light slightly penetrates the flesh of Norman’s prominent ears, for example, or the sheer detail in the set designs, or the way the camera’s positioned to accentuate Norman’s childhood view of the world. Be sure to stick around for a magnificent credits sequence, too, complete with a catchy tune you’ll be humming to yourself on the journey home. Tim Burton’s impending Frankenweenie may mean that ParaNorman won’t be the best animated family horror film of 2012 – we’ll have to wait and see – but ParaNorman’s undoubtedly worth seeing on a big screen, and it’s a fitting birthday present for Universal, the great grandaddy of Hollywood chillers. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.