Art and horror go hand in hand, and not just because a lot of artists explore horror, but because the story of an artist being tormented by their own creations and artistic expressions is a theme that comes up time and time again. People say that artists put a lot of themselves into their work, and this does make you wonder about the dark thoughts that must go on inside their heads to produce some genuinely twisted creations. Stopmotion plays into this story trope, blurring the lines between reality and fiction as it explores a very niche area of filmmaking.
Stopmotion tells the story of Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi), a young filmmaker who wants to make her own films, yet is stuck assisting her ageing mother, played by Stella Gonet, whose arthritis means that she can no longer manipulate the stop motion puppets that have made her famous. Determined to finish her final film, Ella's mother is using her daughter as her hands, puppeting through her to get the results that she wants. It's not a great relationship, and we bear witness to Ella being verbally abused, being put down, and treated as nothing more than an extension of her mother, let alone a real person. However, when her mother suffers a stroke, it gives Ella the opportunity to break out and do her own thing.
Ella, with the help of her boyfriend Tom (Tom York) rents out a small flat and moves her film equipment there. She wants to make her own films, but doesn't know what to do, so instead opts to finish her mothers film whilst she's in hospital. But when Ella meets a strange girl living inside the same building (Caoilinn Springall), it begins a twisted journey as the girl feeds her a scary story that Ella begins to bring to life. As the story of the little girl chased through the woods by the monstrous Ashman builds Ella's willingness to do more and more strange things grows. Ella leaves traditional puppets behind, crafting bizarre creations from raw meat and road kill instead. But this is only the beginning, as the lines between reality and art begin to blur.
Stopmotion explores some interesting themes, ideas that are brought up pretty early on in the film. Ella wants to break out on her own, to make her own stop motion films, but doesn't know how to do so. She has spent her time working for her mother, telling her stories, moving her puppets the way she wants to. She doesn't know how to create herself, she doesn't have that seed of a story that she wants to nurture into something more, just the desire to do so. So, it's not surprising when she falls under the sway of the strange girl who starts to give her a new story. Ella is herself a puppet, she needs that unseen hand manipulating her, telling her what to make and how to animate it because that's all she's known. The problem is, she doesn't want to be a puppet. Ella thinks she's more than that, she thinks she's a great creator, someone who sees working with an animation studio making parts as beneath her.
What does this mean for Ella over the course of the film though? Well, it's something that can only really be talked about, I think, but talking about the ending and the 'twist' reveal done there that's actually pretty obvious very early on in the film. Skip to the next paragraph if you want to avoid spoiler talk. So, the girl that Ella meets isn't real. This seemed pretty clear the second time we see her, and within the first hour of the film it's pretty much confirmed by context clues like only Ella interacting with her and her being in places she shouldn't. Whilst the 'twist' was obvious, the way it affects the story is pretty good. As said before, Ella only really knows how to be the vehicle for other people's creativity, a puppet to be manipulated. As such, her own ideas are out of reach even to herself, and her mind, struggling with grief and a loss of identity, creates this little girl to give her what she needs. Ella is being puppetted by herself, having created this intermediary in order to tell her own story. A story that feeds into these same feelings of being a puppet without meaning.
The above mentioned themes plays heavily into the last act of the film, and I think if you're not watching the film with the willingness to do some of the work yourself it can perhaps be a harder piece to enjoy. I've seen a mixture of reviews for Stopmotion, with some saying that it doesn't make sense, or that the ending is weird. And whilst I will certainly say that the ending is indeed weird, it absolutely does make sense. This isn't a film that's going to hold your hand and explain everything to you, it isn't going to spell out exactly what's happening and why, and you're going to have to pay attention to what's going on to get it all. There's a line spoken in the middle of the film that's absolutely key to the ending, literally explaining the final shot in the movie, but if you're not taking that on board it can certainly not sit well come the closing credits.
Director Robert Morgan, and their co-writer Robin King, have constructed a piece of work that's designed to unsettle, and part of that is its lack of answers. I understood what the film was trying to do, but even with that understanding I can't tell you exactly what everything in the film means fully. And I think that's a large part of what the creators wanted. They wanted a film that left the audience feeling unease. Answers help us to make sense of things, and can help people deal with truly terrible events, so of course not knowing keeps that peace of mind just out of reach.
Another area in which the filmmakers try to unsettle the audience is with the stop motion animation that's scattered throughout. The puppets used in the film might be some of the most unsettling I think I've seen. The imagery used is fairly simple, Ella only has one set and two characters, but the way in which the puppets are designed to look are truly disgusting. Fleshy, deformed, and a little too close to human, the puppets are stomach-turning a lot of the time. This is where a lot of the films overt horror comes from, and the scenes involving the puppets are disgusting in just the right way.
Even with all of these elements, with a story with some interesting ideas, and some disgusting puppetry, the film kind of fails to really excite. It's a shame, as Aisling Franciosi is superb in the starring role. Her fall into grief and madness is subtly managed, and she brings a level of both sympathy and revulsion to her story. Often the tortured and disturbed artist story will have you afraid of that character, or coming to see them as a villain. But in Ella's case you can't help but come away feeling sorry for her. She elicits sympathy by being kind of pathetic, and whilst that makes for an interesting change on the formula it doesn't do much to draw you into the narrative, and it feels a little like Franciosi was a bit wasted in the role.
Stopmotion is an interesting film, with some moments that will make you feel a bit grossed out, but that's about it. It's interesting, but it doesn't grab you. There's little here that got me excited during the film, and not a whole lot that I really feel was all too memorable. The concepts presented here aren't new, the characters are fairly flat and ill explored, and whilst the stop motion animation is great and adds a fun element to the movie it's not enough to carry the film or keep me truly invested. Whilst not a bad movie by any stretch, Stopmotion does feel a little like a wasted opportunity and ends up a film that I think I'm likely to forget.
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