This New-To-Shudder Live-Action Movie Perfectly Uses Stop-Motion to Up the Horror (2024)

2024 has been seen as a step down from recent years for the horror genre, as there has yet to be a huge, breakout blockbuster, and while that may be true from a money perspective, creatively, horror is doing just as well as ever. The perfect example of this is Robert Morgan's Stopmotion, starring Aisling Franciosi, who horror fans may recognize from The Nightingale. It's not a slasher or a creature feature, but a look into madness told through body horror and psychological torment, mixing live-action and stop-motion to deliver one of the most eery horror movies of recent years. Its theme of what happens to an overworked person whose obsession begins to eat away at their psyche has been explored before in movies like The Shining, but Jack Torrance got off easy only having to deal with ghosts. For Franciosi's Ella Blake, she has to meet a frightening new creation in a battle where anything can happen.

Stopmotion (2024)

R

Horror

Animation

A stop-motion animator struggles to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother.

Release Date

September 24, 2023

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Director

Robert Morgan

Cast

Aisling Franciosi , Stella Gonet , Tom York , James Swanton

Runtime

93 minutes

Writers

Robin King , Robert Morgan

Ella Blake's Work in 'Stopmotion' Drives Her to Madness

Stopmotion is director and co-writer Robert Morgan's first feature-length film, but his past experiences made him ideal for this film's plot. For years, Morgan worked as an animator and director on short films, and although Stopmotion is only 93 minutes long, there are several scenes of stop-motion animation throughout the runtime. The story follows Ella Blake (Franciosi) whose entire world revolves around working for her demanding mother, Suzanne (Stella Gonet), a stop-motion artist who can't complete her latest and last film due to her worsening arthritis. She gets Ella to do the work for her, which consists of moving puppets a few centimeters, taking a photo, then moving a little more for another photo, over and over again. It's a tedious and stressful process, one made even worse for Ella as her mother stands behind her and berates her the entire time.

Ella takes the abuse, and although she has a man in her life, Tom (Tom York), who cares about her, she isn't able to give him much emotionally. Moments after having sex, she's already thinking about leaving his bed so she can get right back to work. When he drives her home, Tom tells Ella she should try to make her own movie, but she tells him, "I don't have my own voice." She is her mother's work, and that is her entire identity. Even late at night, as Ella is craving sleep, her mother forces her to work, calling her "poppet," which is not a term of endearment, but an encapsulation of who Ella is. Her life takes a sudden change when Suzanne has a stroke that puts her in the hospital. Although tragic, it's a way out of making the film for Ella. But rather than take a break, she becomes even more obsessed with the movie — until a mysterious girl arrives in her life and sends her on a different course.

Working all alone in a studio day and night on her mother's film, a young girl who lives in the building appears and immediately takes an interest in Ella's work. This girl has the curious mind of a child, but she's not impressed with the film her new friend is working on. The girl, whose name we never learn, tells Ella to make a different film, a better one, with a story about a girl who's scared and lost in the woods but finds a house to hide in away from the stalking Ashman, "who no one wants to meet." The Ashman is a lumbering man formed with ash made to represent death, and it's not just the doll he's after.

'Stopmotion' Incorporates Terrifying Animation to Up the Scares

Ella begins this new film as requested by this kid she just met, making a doll out of mortician's wax, which leads to some truly terrifying imagery. If you're expecting this to turn into a run-of-the-mill horror movie, with little dolls that come to life and attack people, sorry, this isn't Child's Play, but a movie much more terrifying in its slow-burn visual symbolism. Rather than spelling out the horror, Robert Morgan shows it to us, leaving it to us to figure it out. If you're paying attention, and really putting yourself inside Ella's head, it's not so hard to decipher.

To feel empathy for a woman lost in grief, and who obsesses over her work more than ever to get through it, is to understand Ella and how she could so quickly lose her mind. The doll in Stopmotion, with its mortician wax skin, almost looks like it's melting, its small eyes at once full of fear and devoid of life. It's not a spoiler to realize this doll represents Ella running away from her fears just like the puppet girl is running from the Ashman. Stopmotion does a stellar job of bringing that vision to life, taking us inside the stop-motion film multiple times, which is always a jolt so striking that it could be its own horror movie. One scene has the wax puppet hiding in the house as the distorted Ashman appears in the night knocking at her door. With these off-kilter figures like nightmares coming to life, it's a blessing that we're only put in it for several seconds at a time.

Stopmotion digs deeper into Ella's psychological meltdown. As our protagonist loses more control over what is real and what isn't, the viewer can't tell either. Is the director making stylistic choices in certain scenes or is Ella's warped mind unraveling under the weight of her combined mental illness and stress? That building madness leads to a sense of betrayal and violence, but what is more shocking is the symbolism behind Ella's breakdown. Ella never had a real childhood where she could be her true self. Instead, she has always been a puppet for her mother's work and doesn't know what to do without her. As she told Tom, she doesn't have her own voice. When she's all alone, that voice comes searching in the form of a familiar little girl, told in chunks through a disfigured doll with brown hair and brown eyes just like our hero. With her mother dying, and Ella's psyche dying with it, is it any wonder that she would use morticians' wax to mold this creation?

The girls wants Ella to create a better story, but being found by the Ashman is what is on her mind. Ella begins to break down, figuratively and literally, as she is consumed, not just by her work and fears, but by the Ashman himself. She becomes her work because she is her work, ripping away at the shell of herself in the process. There are bizarre shots of an egg too that might confuse a viewer at first, but Ella's fragile mind is cracking just like it. Stopmotion's most intense scenes are when the Ashman becomes life-sized and is born into Ella's world. He represents the grief and inadequacy that makes her throw her entire being into her work. The girl says that puppets are put back in the box as their usefulness ends. If Ella, a puppet to her mother and now her own obsession, stops working, does her usefulness end as well?

'Stopmotion' Combines Reality With Stop-Motion to Explore Obsession

Obsession is one of the most used motives in horror films, understandable as it deals with a lack of emotional or physical control over one's actions. Often, that obsession is in the movie's antagonist, with a killer being unable to control their evil thoughts, like the mannequin-loving killer in Maniac, or the men who stalk the one woman they can't let go of in recent horror films such as TheInvisible Man and Watcher. Sometimes, though, it's the protagonist who is given the obsession as what they must overcome. Swallow did that to disgusting success with a young housewife (Haley Bennett) who can't control herself from swallowing inedible objects like tacks. That's Ella in Stopmotion, the hero we follow as her job consumes her to the point that she might not be the hero of her story any longer.

It's been said that many creators suffer for their art, and that's never been more true than with Stopmotion's Ella Blake. She lost her childhood to someone else's obsession, and she has lost her adulthood and now her mental health to her own. So, if you're a workaholic, take a break every once in a while and connect with who you really are. If you don't, the Ashman might come for you next.

Stopmotion is available to watch on Shudder in the U.S.

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