Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi) is a stop-motion animator who assists her animator mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet) in finishing her final work as debilitating arthritis has robbed Suzanne of her ability to animate. When Suzanne suffers a stroke and is rendered comatose, Ella is intent on finishing her mother's film and rents an apartment to use as a studio. However, the appearance of a mysterious little girl (Caoilinn Springall) sends Ella on a different path animating the tale of a girl in the woods hunted by an entity known as The Ash Man, but the lines between reality and fantasy soon become blurred.
Stopmotion is the feature debut of director Robert Morgan, a British stop-motion animator and director whose work has previously been seen in a number of short films including as a segment in The ABCs of Death 2. Given a limited release in February 2024 before its premier on Shudder, Stopmotion has earned considerable praise for its direction, atmosphere and performances and you can see why in the final product. While I appreciated Stopmotion on a technical level, I was overall left somewhat cold by it.
To start off, Stopmotion showcases some nicely unnerving animation by Morgan that is intermixed with the live-action work with some memorable sequences of the effects interacting with the human elements in grotesque and macabre ways. While not possessing the level of polish of say Laika or Shadowmachine, Morgan's grungy but minimalist aesthetics are put to good use and you can feel the level of effort that went into his abominations. Aisling Franciosi gives a great performance as Ella Blake who conveys the characters descent into psychosis quite convincingly. There's a real sense of tragedy to the character as she spent her life in her mother's shadow and you get the sense from the opening sequence where Suzanne looks over her shoulder making the already arduous process of stop-motion all the more unpleasant with her curt delivery towards Ella.
I think where the movie struggled to hook me was with the nature of its plot which will be very familiar to horror fans as it does have shades of the likes of Videodrome or Censor albeit with a slight seasoning of Mad God in the aesthetic value. I also feel like the movie undercuts itself by taking Stella Gonet's Suzanne out of the story mostly because the dynamic between Gonet and Franciosi felt very rich nuanced and tension filled and while they try for something similar with Caoilinn Springall's character (who is good in the movie, no question) the exchanges never really recapture that strong undercurrent from the opening.
Stopmotion is a frustrating film for me because it's got such dedication and effort on display and seemingly has all the parts needed to make something I should love but the pieces never settled in a way that it went above respect to greater enjoyment. As a stop-motion and horror fan I think there's some good material here and I'm curious to see what Morgan can pull off with greater backing, even if this is only a marginal one time viewing from my own viewpoint.
Stopmotion is the feature debut of director Robert Morgan, a British stop-motion animator and director whose work has previously been seen in a number of short films including as a segment in The ABCs of Death 2. Given a limited release in February 2024 before its premier on Shudder, Stopmotion has earned considerable praise for its direction, atmosphere and performances and you can see why in the final product. While I appreciated Stopmotion on a technical level, I was overall left somewhat cold by it.
To start off, Stopmotion showcases some nicely unnerving animation by Morgan that is intermixed with the live-action work with some memorable sequences of the effects interacting with the human elements in grotesque and macabre ways. While not possessing the level of polish of say Laika or Shadowmachine, Morgan's grungy but minimalist aesthetics are put to good use and you can feel the level of effort that went into his abominations. Aisling Franciosi gives a great performance as Ella Blake who conveys the characters descent into psychosis quite convincingly. There's a real sense of tragedy to the character as she spent her life in her mother's shadow and you get the sense from the opening sequence where Suzanne looks over her shoulder making the already arduous process of stop-motion all the more unpleasant with her curt delivery towards Ella.
I think where the movie struggled to hook me was with the nature of its plot which will be very familiar to horror fans as it does have shades of the likes of Videodrome or Censor albeit with a slight seasoning of Mad God in the aesthetic value. I also feel like the movie undercuts itself by taking Stella Gonet's Suzanne out of the story mostly because the dynamic between Gonet and Franciosi felt very rich nuanced and tension filled and while they try for something similar with Caoilinn Springall's character (who is good in the movie, no question) the exchanges never really recapture that strong undercurrent from the opening.
Stopmotion is a frustrating film for me because it's got such dedication and effort on display and seemingly has all the parts needed to make something I should love but the pieces never settled in a way that it went above respect to greater enjoyment. As a stop-motion and horror fan I think there's some good material here and I'm curious to see what Morgan can pull off with greater backing, even if this is only a marginal one time viewing from my own viewpoint.