After several years of a mixture of relatively decent horror and run-of-the-mill Blumhouse-styled horror, the genre seems to be back on the offensive in 2024. Earlier this year, “Immaculate” set the stage with great acting, “The First Omen” followed it up with weird visuals and cinematography, and Abigail brought the blood and guts.
Now, “Stopmotion” has hobbled onto the scene like a deformed, bloodied, and covered-in-maggot version of “Wallace and Gromit,” bringing a nearly complete package for arthouse horror weirdos and fans.
As her mother, a stop-motion animator, slowly loses motor functions to arthritis, Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi) aids her as an assistant, from configuring the dolls frame-by-frame to taking each shot.
Called the “hands” to her mother’s “brain,” Blake feels trapped from working on her animation and creativity. After her mother unexpectedly falls into a coma, Blake finally frees herself to pursue her stop-motion dreams.
Unfortunately, her lack of creativity compared to her mother and industry peers has caused her to crash into a creative block at terminal velocity. As her sanity erodes, Blake’s stop-motion creations begin to mould her sense of reality.
Sacrificing story for visuals
Directed by Robert Morgan, who has a history of directing horror live-action and stop-motion animation shorts, “Stopmotion” blends both mediums, with each progressively infesting the other as Blake’s sensibilities and mental state rot away.
Being an arthouse film, there is a great emphasis on the visual and aural experience. The focus remains largely on its shock value and the hallucinatory trip that it takes viewers on. On the other hand, barely held together by duct tape, “Stopmotion’s” narrative and ending are interpretive.
Franciosi does an excellent job of playing her character and demonstrating how the cracks gradually worsen, but there is no depth to Blake and nothing for the viewer to care about beyond her mental illness.
Though there is a sense of urgency that the film presents for Blake to complete her first stop-motion film, there is a lack of motivation behind the character in completing her goal.
Malice and vomit
The true selling point of “Stopmotion” is how it forgoes the loud jump scares and cheap thrills of mainstream horror and opts for surrealistic horror by making the viewer uncomfortable, squeamish, gag, and maybe even projectile vomit.
Scenes of caustic physical violence accompany grotesque aesthetics, pairing together like wine from a good year with a medium-rare steak. There is a scene where a character casually cuts open their thigh, digs around, and severs a tendon. The tendon is then used for something else.
Like her stop-motion dolls, Blake’s makeshift studio warps transform from professionally made figurines to aberrations made from slowly rotting meat. These collective sequences and scenes etch themselves into the viewer’s mind as any good arthouse horror film should do.
Divorced from its mainstream horror cousins and their pitfalls, “Stopmotion” does what the director sets out to do by being disgusting enough that a single viewing is more than enough to appreciate the film’s value in the horror genre.
“Stopmotion” is streaming on Shudder.
