STOPMOTION (2023)

Studio:   IFC Films/Shudder
Director: Robert Morgan
Writer:   Robert Morgan, Robin King
Producer: Alain de la Mata, Christopher Granier-Deferre
Stars:    Aisling Franciosi, Tom York, Caoilinn Springall, Therica Wilson-Read, Stella Gonet

Review Score:

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Summary:

While coming to grips with a creative drought as well as an identity crisis, a bizarre new project sends a frustrated animator into a spiral of madness.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Unable to use her hands due to debilitating arthritis, celebrated stop-motion animator Suzanne Blake barks instructions to her daughter Ella, also an animator, to help finish her final film project. At one moment, Ella suggests pursuing a different idea for the film, but Ella resumes a subservient role when overbearing Suzanne challenges her to create a story of her own.

After Suzanne is hospitalized following a sudden stroke, Ella's boyfriend Tom helps Ella move into a new workspace where she sets up equipment to continue her mother's project. Ella seemingly meets a little girl who takes an interest in Ella's stop-motion art, yet the girl strangely insists that Ella should abandon Suzanne's cyclops character to create a story about a girl lost in the woods instead.

That night, Ella has a haunting dream. She then wakes to find her mother's puppets inexplicably beheaded and her new studio in disarray. Ella decides to make a new movie based on the idea suggested to her by the little girl.

Tom's sister Polly, who works as an animator in advertising, stops by to see Ella. Ella briefly shows Polly her new project.

The little girl expresses excitement upon seeing that Ella is using her story idea. She also convinces Ella to recreate the lead character out of raw meat by promising to tell Ella more of the story. The little girl reveals that the girl in the woods is hiding in a house from "Ash Man," a villainous stalker who visits the girl over three nights.

A knock at the door wakes Ella from another bizarre dream. The little girl escorts Ella to a dead fox in the woods. Once again, the little girl promises to tell more of the story to Ella in exchange for using the dead fox as character clay.

Recognizing that her new film is also based on an idea someone else gave her, Ella acquires psychotropic drugs from Polly that she hopes will inspire her imagination. Ella does not take the drugs, but she still experiences haunting hallucinations. After seeing a vision of the little girl, Ella returns to the forest to find the girl waiting with the fox carcass. Ella acquiesces to the little girl's demand to fashion the Ash Man character out of something dead.

While continuing to work on the film with the little girl, the sound of her door buzzing begins mirroring events in the film where Ash Man knocks on the hiding girl's door. Ella blacks out after seemingly having a real-life encounter with Ash Man.

Tom wakes Ella. Tom expresses concern for Ella's mental wellbeing as she explains how the man from her film appeared at her door. Agreeing that the project appears to be having a detrimental effect on her, Ella decides to stay at Tom's place.

During a shower, Ella seemingly sees part of her leg morphing into moldable mortician's wax. At lunch with Tom, Ella sees another vision of the little girl, who taunts Ella by telling her that on the second night of the story, Ash Man touches the hiding girl.

To prevent Ella from going back to her project, Tom has Polly get her a menial job on an animated commercial shoot. While on set, Ella discovers Polly stole the concept of a girl hiding in the woods. Ella pushes Polly, tears the head off the puppet being filmed, and angrily storms out in a rage.

During a hospital visit, Ella's mother cryptically claims that the two of them are not alike because Ella cannot control her morbid imagination like Suzanne can. Suzanne later dies.

Ella returns to making the film with the little girl. Despite the girl's warning that she can't change the story, Ella tries altering it so that the lost girl escapes Ash Man. Ash Man seemingly comes to life and feeds something to Ella while she is in a frightened fugue state. As Ella writhes on the floor, the little girl says, "Told you."

Ella wakes up in the hospital with a leg wound presumed to be self-inflicted. Tom tells Ella he is going to destroy the props and footage from her film because of how it is ruining her. Ella convinces Tom to wait until they can destroy it together.

After Suzanne's death, the little girl seemingly helps Ella break back into her apartment studio. The little girl tells Ella they will need something bigger than a dead fox to finish the film. Ella tries strangling the little girl, but she mysteriously does not die.

Ella begins painfully tearing into the wound on her leg. Tom and Polly unexpectedly interrupt the self-mutilation. When they try carrying her out of the building, Ella pushes Tom down a staircase and begins beating Polly before finally crushing her throat with a camera tripod. Ella then suffocates Tom.

The little girl directs Ella in cutting up the bodies and finishing the film. While recording, Ash Man begins approaching the other puppet, but suddenly moves toward Ella. The little girl claims that isn't supposed to happen. Ella's head turns into wax that she feeds Ash Man. After Ash Man consumes her, Ella enters an ethereal reality where she and the little girl watch the film she made, which depicts Ella's bloody death. The little girl says, "I love it." Ella smiles before sealing herself inside a coffin.

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Review:

A quick skim of pull quotes from published critics shows a fair amount of effusive acclaim for "Stopmotion," an experimental indie that follows a frustrated animator's journey into a nightmare of her own mind's making. Collider calls it "a one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted horror film with a great performance from Aisling Franciosi." The New York Times says, "director and animator Robert Morgan has crafted a narratively slender, visually sophisticated first feature." Paste Magazine raises its praise highest of all by claiming "Morgan's feature debut is as stunning, diabolical and boundary-pushing an emergence as any filmmaker could hope to achieve."

I chose those particular quotes to demonstrate how positive words still possess the ability to instill an unfavorable impression in those with a particular bias. For instance, if you're someone who stares desperately at a clock whenever a movie enters arthouse territory, you can read between the lines above and equate "narratively slender, visually sophisticated" with "barely a linear plot, but looks good" or translate "boundary-pushing (feature debut)" to "throws things at the wall and hopes an agreeable audience thinks those things stick."

I also chose those quotes because I wish I had the same appreciative experience with "Stopmotion" that those critics apparently had. To my taste, "Stopmotion" is a common character study that illustrates a struggling person's descent into interpretive madness and, although it is indeed well made, the movie doesn't do anything impressive enough to convince me the genre needs yet another one.

The first shot in "Stopmotion" features a blue-hued egg whose slow rotation reveals vein-like markings on its shell. Titles cut in with letters shaking violently, like when a misaligned filmstrip flutters through a projector. Aisling Franciosi appears onscreen as Ella, the stop-motion animator suffering an identity crisis throughout the film. Her face alternately lit red and green by strobing lights, Ella sways as though dazed while ravers dance behind her. Ella's expressions flash a range of odd faces as catchall "ominous music" then begins to swell.

I like that detailing of the film's first minute because whether that erratic assembly sounds like an aesthetic that's right up your alley or the kind of ambiguous sequencing that puts you to sleep, you already have a sound idea of where you'll stand with "Stopmotion." Some slow-burn dramas favor the slow. Others favor the burn. "Stopmotion" very much belongs in the former category.

As the "narratively slender" story goes, Ella starts out as subservient to her overbearing mother, an overused archetype that Stephen King essentially had the last word on in 1974. An acclaimed stop-motion artist herself, Suzanne sees Ella as inferior, and never misses an opportunity to coldly cut down her daughter with this opinion.

After a stroke hospitalizes Suzanne, Ella has a window to finally make her own film. The trouble is, coming up with imaginative ideas isn't her strong suit. So when a mysterious little girl who goes unnamed shows up with a suggestion to make a movie about a lost girl hiding from a sinister stalker, Ella seemingly meets her muse. However, Ella's life soon undergoes an upheaval as her movie's menace begins inexplicably making haunting appearances that could be driving Ella crazy.

With its cerebral focus, "Stopmotion" contains several interpretive elements, yet its themes aren't difficult to uncover. Ella's situation finds her experiencing writer's block, wrestling her personality away from her mentor's inescapable shadow, and being quite literally consumed by work. No matter if these messages are depicted as hallucinatory excursions into a dark forest or mirrored in frightening figures molded from mortician's wax, similar issues affect those in creative fields on a regular basis. That's why it's unexpected that "Stopmotion" couldn't connect with me personally, even when its central character should be an avatar for anyone’s feelings of imposter syndrome and directionless career choices.

I suspect the problem is "Stopmotion" takes too much out of The Abstract Artist's Playbook in terms of hoping it weaves a terrifying texture out of happenstance more than substance. "Stopmotion" is far more approachable as fiction than something like "Skinamarink's" (review here) impenetrable pile-up of unrelated imagery, so don't mistake that connotation to mean "Stopmotion" doesn't make sense. "Stopmotion" has a story, but it tells the tale with atmospheric elements that feel haphazard as opposed to planned. "Music" often sounds like a squeaky tricycle or a metal chair scraping across a hard floor. Ella's puppets emit vaguely unnerving vibes, yet they look almost as cute as they are creepy, not at all like true "nightmare fuel."

In simplest terms, I reiterate my wish that I saw the "one-of-a-kind" vision that writer/director Robert Morgan set out to create instead of a mostly uneventful effort formed from fractured ideas. Morgan's compelling artistry is unquestioned, but its effectiveness remains up for debate. Where one person saw something "stunning" and "diabolical," I only saw a slight spooker that turned out to be more of a snoozer.

Review Score: 45

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