Starring the voices of Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Nick Frost, Elle Fanning; directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable; 100 minutes; PG for action, some peril and mild rude humor

There’s something about stop motion 3-D animation – the not-quite-real textures of skin and hair, the quite real cloth and metal, the subtle gloomy lighting effects – that says “spooky.” All the best animated films with a hint of Halloween have been stop motion animation or digital efforts that duplicate that hand-molded model look – “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Coraline.”

“The Boxtrolls” is from Laika, the studio that made “ParaNorman” and “Coraline.” This adaptation of an Alan Snow novel (“Here Be Monsters!”) is inventive and fanciful and almost certainly the best animated film of the year.

The title characters are pointy-eared trolls who live in abandoned cardboard boxes and rummage through the garbage cans of Cheesebridge at night. They collect geegaws and such: door knockers, busted alarm clocks, abandoned toys. But they’re feared. They’ve stolen a human baby, so that must be in their diet.

“Hide your cheese,” purrs Snatcher, the red-hatted exterminator the townsfolk have hired to wipe out the trolls. “Hide your tender and delicious babies!” But Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter Winnifred (Elle Fanning, with a plummy English accent) spies the Boxtrolls at work and sees a boy in their ranks. There’s more to them than Snatcher is letting on, and as she gets to know the boy, she and we learn something of their true nature and their history.

Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers

In “The Boxtrolls,” little monsters live under the streets of Cheesebridge, and eat creepy crawlies, a film based on a book by by British children’s author, Alan Snow. Courtesy Laika Entertainment .