‘Stopmotion’ Movie Review: Nightmarish Art Obsession Comes In A Familiar Package
Photo from IFC Films
From Jeff Nelson
From The Nightmare Before Christmas to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, stop-motion animation is a gorgeous, yet laborious filmmaking technique with the ability to give an entirely different texture to visual storytelling. Robert Morgan makes his directorial feature film debut with Stopmotion, turning the narrative in on the slow-moving process itself. The compelling plot falls to familiar genre trappings that keep it from reaching truly unnerving heights.
Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi) is a stop-motion animator, working for her cruel mother (Stella Gonet), whose name carries weight within her field. After the overbearing matriarch ends up in the hospital, Ella tries to find her own artistic voice by telling a very different story with the filmmaking technique. She’s ultimately forced to face her own demons in the process, shaking her very sanity to the core.
Stopmotion opens with colored strobe lights illuminating Ella’s changing expressions, acting as a form of foreshadowing for the conflict resting underneath the surface. Whether she’s working on the stop-motion project or spending time with Tom (Tom York), she immediately turns sheepish at the mere thought of her mother. However, this proves to be more of a reflection of Ella’s own insecurities surrounding her past and self-doubts in her artistry.
Ella connects with a mysterious little girl (Caoilinn Springall), who serves as an inspiration for her stop-motion animated story. However, she continues to question her own artistic voice, especially as reality and her greatest nightmares begin to collide in her film, fighting to reclaim her own story. The materials for the physical stop-motion figures change, as do her creative decisions in the journey to bring something to life.
Morgan and co-writer Robin King tap into a fascinating world with some unnerving imagery, particularly in the stop-motion animation that centers itself in the arrival of a dark and terrifying figure. However, the plot sticks far too close to familiar horror genre tropes, allowing the audience to arrive at conclusions far ahead of its violent final act. It’s hallucinatory and abstract, but not without a point-of-view. It’s just a shame that even the gross climax isn’t quite big enough of a payoff to its slow build.
Aside from the wonderful use of stop-motion animation, Lola de la Mata’s highly-effective score delivers in building atmosphere. Morgan captures a movie-within-a-movie, without subjecting the audience to the all-too popular meta narrative. The occasional moments of nightmarish imagery are enough to generate a sense of uneasiness, but it doesn’t quite go hard enough to dig beneath the skin.
Stopmotion is effective in concept, but an overreliance on tired tropes holds its narrative back from developing into something far scarier and more thought-provoking. Morgan undoubtedly brings promising skill to the table, particularly in the stop-motion animation sequences. Unfortunately, the primary story unfolding in live-action ends up being the least interesting part of the film.
Rating: 2/5
Stopmotion hits theaters on February 23rd, 2024.
