Stopmotion
Stopmotion
Starring Aisling Franciosi, Stella Gonet, Tom York, Caoilinn Springall
Directed by Robert Morgan
Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi) is a stop-motion animator who lives under the oppressive thumb of her famous stop-motion animator mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet), who demands Ella make her movie because arthritis stopped the movement of her own hands. Ella has no existence of her own, as she's either forcibly finishing her mother's movie or tending to her needs, and barely gets to interact with her friends and her boyfriend Tom (Tom York). After a tragic event, however, Ella moves in with Tom and continues her mother's work until she meets a little girl (Caroilinn Springall) next door, who tells her that the movie is boring and tells Ella a new story - a story of a girl being hunted by a creature known as the Ash Man. Obsessed with this new story, Ella throws herself wholeheartedly into the project, and is soon haunted by visions of the Ash Man himself which blurs the lines between reality and fiction, and which drives Ella further and further into madness.
Director Robert Morgan is an acclaimed stop-motion animator in his own right, having directed several short horror stop-motion films that've earned him acclaim in the horror world. In his first feature-length debut, he once again delves into his stop-motion roots while telling a pseudo-autobiographical story about his life - or at least his life if he allowed his creations to control his mind. It's a deep character study in madness and obsession, something akin to "Black Swan," but sadly unlike "Black Swan" this film relies too much on generic tropes that any novice horror fan could see coming a mile away - but that doesn't mean the film is terrible. It's just a missed opportunity to be something great instead of just acceptable.
The stop-motion in the film is the bread and butter of the movie, and to that end Morgan has no equal. His designs are downright nauseating, as Ella incorporates raw meat (an idea actually used by famed stop-motion artist Jan Svankmajer) and even the carcass of a dead fox to create her beings. They're creepy, haunting, and memorable for all the wrong reasons in all the right ways, and I wished the entire film was about that story. Instead it's about Ella's quest for perfection, for making the perfect movie, and that's where the film falters.
It's no fault of Aisling Franciosi, who has proven her worth in films like "The Nightingale" and "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," and she plays Ella with an earnest steadfastness that goes beyond the paper-thin script. Ella is a woman who is constantly being tortured and controlled by someone - at first by her overbearing mother, then by the little girl living next door who tells Ella the story and who keeps it close to her vest, not allowing Ella any creative control. Ella thinks it's her movie, but it's never been her movie - it's her curse. She becomes haunted by her creations, and in several awe-inspiring moments actually hunted by them which, again, is the film's strength. Her stinted dialogue isn't, as she repeats at different moments lines like "it's my movie!" and the like, and the character herself becomes a victim of the film's own narrative.
The gore and violence is intense, especially on the stop-motion end, and serves as the film's most visceral, unnerving moments that'll haunt your nightmares for nights to come - if only the rest of the film was as terrifying.
The Score: A-
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