Stopmotion

Stopmotion is the feature length debut of writer/director Robert Morgan, and he’d very much like your attention. To that end, he employs some classic horror tropes, albeit ones bordering on cliches at this point: the creepy child, art imitating life, the artist’s loss of identity, trauma precipitating all, and a spooky folk tale. The combination does keep you a bit on edge, at least in the stretches where you can convince yourself to sit back and let the movie take you on a ride, until it slips up and elicits an “Oh brother!” by leaning into some tired imagery or dialog, or dispenses one of its many unmotivated plot contrivances. This is not a movie populated by particularly intelligent or self-aware characters, but it is chock full of haunting imagery and excellent stop motion animation. How much purchase that affords it with you with depend greatly on what you’re looking for.

Our subject is Ella (Aisling Franciosi), a stop motion animator adrift. While all her friends and fellow artists are working on exciting projects of their own, she’s stuck serving as the hands of her legendary, demanding, arthritic mother (Stella Gonet). What Ella really wants is to create a work of her own. But when she sits down to tweak even the slightest scene without her mother’s presence…nothing. She’s just doesn’t seem to have a story in her. Which is especially difficult when her mother falls into a coma, leaving Ella obligated to to complete a tale in which she already had trouble investing.

Fortunately for her, a little girl (Caoilinn Springall) happens by her studio with some fresh perspective! Nothing sinister or upsetting at all. Never mind that she seems to have some strange power over Ella, expending little effort to run roughshod over the previous story with her own twisted fairy tale. Or how easily that disturbing story comes tumbling out of her. Or how she’s unsatisfied by Ella creating her doll out of mortician’s wax, and insists on an additional ingredient for added reality: raw meat.

Subtlety is not Morgan’s strong point. From the very first full scene, Ella’s mother refers to her as poppet. Would you believe that’s the most indirect nod to one of the movie’s themes? To say nothing of the oddness of Ella’s interactions with and endless tolerance for the little girl, or the vividness of her violent dreams. As assembled in the film, combined with the visual story telling, he’s basically screaming at you about what’s going on. Which isn’t inherently a problem, but it does weaken the later scenes in which these implications are literalized.

Still, the visuals are pretty sweet. I’m always in for some quality stop motion, and I love the grungy, cobbled together look of the little girl doll and the Ash Man. The foundational wax gives them a deformed, melting look, which is at the same time familiar and distinct, also owing to the coloration and splotchiness from the other substances mix in. The simple setting of a random cottage in the middle of the woods with a homunculus-like stranger chasing the little girl is at once derivative and evocative. Overall, the visual ideas here coalescence into a promising vision.

I just wish it was all in support of a more compelling story.

While the trauma and general inability for Ella to forge her own identity is a fine idea, that she becomes a living puppet just makes her a fairly uninteresting character. For all her dreams, she has little drive or ability to do anything about them. They’re nebulous, poorly formed yearnings, which is why the space in which she could be crafting her own story is instead filled by the little girl’s fairly tale. To say nothing of her forgettable friends and boyfriend (Tom York), who technically touch the plot and help move it forward but I could barely be bothered to remember how.

The result is a movie which shows a ton of promise, but isn’t quite there. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a live action horror film utilize stop motion so extensively and effectively, but it’s the stuff around that animation which falls a bit flat. Which shouldn’t be a surprise: while he’s worked in live-action before, many of his shorts have been the sort of grotesque stop motion on display here (including “D is for Deloused”, his segment in 2014’s ABCs of Death 2). Making the decision to mix the two for this feature an odd choice. I have to imagine it was primarily budgetary: why else would you not fully embrace your bread and butter when given a chance to reach a wider audience? Which is a shame: I’d love to see what Morgan can do with the money to go all out in crafting a dark fairly tale. Maybe this film will bring him to the attention of the right people such that we all get to reap the rewards.