Threshold Regimes in Animated Interiors: Phenomenological and Post-Phenomenological Mediation in Encanto and Coraline

Thresholds are not simply separations between spaces; they are relational conditions through which interior spatial experience and subjectivity are formed. How thresholds are constituted through interiority, and how they produce different experiential regimes, remain less examined. Drawing on phenomenological and post-phenomenological perspectives, this article repositions the domestic threshold through the animated interiors of Encanto (2021) and Coraline (2009). These films offer two comparable cases in which similar spatial devices produce markedly different experiences. A scene-based comparative coding analysis, conducted with MAXQDA, traces five interior parameters: boundary elements, material articulation, chromatic strategies, kinetic spatial behaviors, and object relations. These parameters give rise to two distinct threshold regimes. In Encanto, a supportive regime cultivates belonging, recognition, and spatial integration; in Coraline, a deceptive and manipulative regime produces disorientation, alienation, and the uncanny. The threshold is therefore understood both as an atmospheric and multisensory experience, as phenomenology emphasizes, and as a mediating spatial arrangement that positions the subject within specific relational networks. By proposing the concept of the threshold regime, the study offers a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding domestic interiority as a dynamic, multilayered, and relational spatial formation.