Spooky stop-motion animation maestro Henry Selick is back behind the camera for the first time since 2009’s captivating “Coraline.” This time, his writing talents are paired with horror genius Jordan Peele for an unconventional coming-of-age story in “Wendell & Wild,” now streaming on Netflix.

The film is wonderfully animated and voice-acted, and the story brings up great discussion topics, but suffers from being overloaded with too much plot, not allowing itself to fully shine in its wonderful weirdness. However, overall, the film is still worth adding to your queue if you are still in the mood for some lightly fun scares for your post-Halloween nights.

Selick and Peele (who also serve as producers) adapted the film from an unpublished book by Selick and Clay McLeod Chapman about a young girl named Kat (Lyric Ross) who’s thrown into the system after her parents tragically die in a car crash when she is young.

Blaming herself for their deaths, she’s determined to punish herself for the rest of her life, not allowing any happiness to creep in.

Years after the accident, she returns home to Rustbank, where she’s been accepted into a second-chance program at the local Catholic girl’s school, but she finds the vibrant and thriving small town she knew now derelict and decimated, taken over by the shady Klaxon Korp.

She avoids making friends with the popular girls Siobhan, Sloane and Sweetie (Tamara Smart, Seema Virdi and Ramona Young), who try desperately to form a bond, and largely ignores the artistic trans boy in her class, Raul (Sam Zelaya). Instead, she keeps to herself and opts to be a quintessential emo/punk kid.

But a series of events point Kat to believe that something is definitely up at this school, in Rustbank and with her.

Meanwhile in the underworld, imprisoned demon brothers Wendell and Wild (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) are forced to apply miracle hair cream to the head of their balding father, Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames).

When the two realize that the hair cream also brings beings back to life, they’re determined to pop up to the land of the living and make their dream carnival a reality up here, since their father won’t allow it down there. And Kat is their ticket up.

So Wendell and Wild make a deal with her to bring them topside, but that deal is more than everyone bargained for.

The film that is delivered is visually stunning, and the story offers so many diverse and beautifully rendered, individual characters brimming with life in this story that deals so heavily with death and its impact on the living.

In fact, the diversity itself is worthy of note because I cannot think of another example in the medium that made such a clear choice to not only cast diverse voice actors, but also animate that diversity within the world of the story.

Add in a killer soundtrack, and “Wendell & Wild” is a generally fun ride through the carnival of Selick and Peele’s imaginative script.

But with a mountain of tracks to work through, there’s too much story for this ride to be as impactful as it could be.

With topics such as juvenile incarceration, private prisons, greed and capitalism being dealt with along with themes of finding your place and acceptance, “Wendell & Wild” is full of so many plot points we lose connection to the characters. There’s still a small emotional tie to Kat’s overall goal, but not enough to keep us as hooked as Selick has in the past.

There are also a few moments when it loses steam, getting confusing as it chugs through the many storylines. Yet it’s hard to imagine one of those lines being dropped. They work in tandem with one another, and to lose one could mean the whole ride comes to a halt.

While Selick has delivered a nice overall story, it doesn’t rise as high as his previous credits. But then, with his CV, that might be hard to do.

On screens this week: Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell are together again with writer/director Martin McDonagh’s black comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.” James Gray’s autobiographical coming-of-age film “Armageddon Time” looks at America in the 1980s. On Netflix, the game is afoot again with “Enola Holmes 2,” and all episodes of the TV show about the last Blockbuster on the planet, “Blockbuster,” drops. On Amazon Prime Video, Harry Styles finds himself in a love triangle in “My Policeman,” and Daniel Radcliffe dons an accordion and Hawaiian shirts in “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” on the Roku Channel.

“Wendell & Wild”

105 minutes

Rated PG-13 for for some thematic material, violence, substance use and brief strong language.

2.5 stars