Knocked it down to a 3.5 after thinking about it more. From what I understand Gaiman was in a bit of a rush to finish this for his daughter before she grew too old to enjoy it. I think that's why Coraline is a bit rough around the edges. The writing is a little lazy at times and it seems Gaiman wanted to use this story to challenge how we perceive ourselves as humans and the norms/roles we've established for ourselves, but didn't take the time to flesh those ideas out in any meaningful way. It might not satisfy adults, but I think there's a lot here for younger audiences to enjoy. I'm not a huge horror fan, but I thought this was a delightfully dark little fairy tale.