Horror Movie Review: Stopmotion (2023)

The concept of Stopmotion is both intriguing and exciting. An experimental and original idea executed to the best of everyone’s ability. Yet, the end result is mostly style over substance and falls short in some very important areas.

Aisling Fransciosi stars (and goodness, does she stand out) as Ella Blake. We’re introduced to her as she works on a traditional form of stop motion animation alongside her elderly mother (Stella Gonet). Ella is a highly talented artist, but so was her mother who is now suffering from severe arthritis in her hands. This is why Ella is working with her, helping her finish her final film by doing the laborious task of slowly manipulating the figures and capturing each frame.

Early on, it’s made quite clear that the mother-daughter relationship is not healthy and that there is a large degree of manipulation coming from the mother and being used to force Ella to help. It’s ‘on the nose’ but there’s a clear comparison made in the early part of the film about control. Puppetry, so to speak.

Being manipulated by her mother isn’t Ella’s only problem though, as she is clearly depressed as she struggles to find her own identity. She wants to do her own things, be her own creative, but is lacking the spark needed. She just doesn’t know who she is, and living in the shadow of her mother isn’t helping.

Then her mother has an accident, and dies.

Wanting to honour her mother and cut the strings that have held her back for so long, Ella decides to finish the film they were working on. She enlists the help of her boyfriend, Tom (Tom York), who finds her an apartment she can work in, with the thinking being that she can finally be her own person and find her own voice.

It’s actually a good idea, so to speak, until Ella meets a young girl (Caoilinn Springall) who has different ideas. She finds Ella’s current project extremely boring, and encourages her to come up with something more unique, something more her, which includes Ella rethinking the materials she uses to bring her new story to life.

Things are beginning to go off the deep end, but that’s something that gets worse as Ella’s obsession with her new project, deepens. Reality is beginning to blur as Ella, both figuratively and literally, tortures herself to create something that will show the world that she is somebody.

It’s fair to say that while there isn’t much original about the tortured artist character and them losing their mind slowly to their work, Stopmotion does at least take a different approach. By combining Ella’s story with the madness of her stop motion project slowly coming to life and seen by the viewer, the experience is much more surreal and memorable. It certainly helps that the story Ella creates is quite dark and the puppet designs are delightfully grisly.

All of this and its effect is expertly showcased by Aisling Fransciosi in the Ella role. Playing the tortured artist character so well that it almost outweighs the negatives of the film. From the moment she first appears on screen, dead behind the eyes and clearly depressed, to her manic obsession over the stop motion project, to the horrifying moments that close out the film, she is outstanding.

Alas, she is the only outstanding thing about Stopmotion as the overall experience, in particular, the narrative and the pacing around it, is wholly disappointing. Not only is the story surprisingly predictable, it takes the most blasé of routes too. Filled with predictable turns, character decisions, cliches, and more. It’s actually quite surprising to see such an avant-garde idea be so basic.

Inevitably This, alongside the fact that it can be extremely slow, means the more impressive stop motion and surrealism sections start to lose their panache. It’s hard to be as engaged by them when everything else is so bland. If this wasn’t bad enough, any nuances around psychological exploration is thrown away in favour of ‘on the nose’ references or statements.

It’s so disappointing as the concept is sound and Aisling Fransciosi is fabulous. Sadly, Stopmotion ends up being all style, no substance, and inevitably leaves the overpowering stench of disappointment in its wake.