3 ½ stars
I wanted to run outside the second this movie was over. I wanted out of this weird world I’d been trapped in for the past 93 minutes. I needed to fill my lungs with fresh air. I needed space. If I were a drinking man, I’d say I needed a drink or three, too. I needed Stopmotion out of my head.
I also knew I needed to watch it again once I’d settled down.
Good horror movies scare you, thrill you, make you jump in your seat, and send your popcorn flying. It’s a different experience for a film to do all that while it creeps under your skin and wraps around your subconscious, leaving behind just a whisper that you’re going to have nightmares. That’s the power of what director Robert Morgan, his cast and crew have created.
As the story opens, we watch stop-motion animation legend Suzanne Blake (Stella Gonet) sit imperiously in a chair while she barks orders at her daughter/assistant, Ella (Aisling Franciosi). After years of moving tiny objects a fraction of an inch to make them come alive on film, the older artist has arthritis so severe she can no longer make her art, so she commands her daughter to do it for her. It’s not a collaboration in any sense of the world; it’s more of a master/slave situation. And it’s driving Ella mad.
When Stella has a stroke, Ella moves to a nearly deserted apartment building to set up her equipment and reluctantly starts to finish the work her mother started. A creepy little girl (Caoilinn Springall) stops by to see what her new neighbor is doing, then starts offering suggestions and egging Ella on to stop working on her mother’s art and make her own. The psychological game that develops between Ella, the little girl, the art they create, and the audience is unnerving.
Thrilling, too. While one could spend hours talking about it with others who have experienced the film, it’s almost impossible to explain Stopmotion in words in a review because the images are too visceral, the interactions between art and artists too unnerving. Ella removes some recent stitches from her thigh so she can reach in and get the flesh she needs to finish one of her creations, which is forgettable as a sentence, is one of the images that will haunt you.
None of this works, of course, without the powerful performances of Springall and Franciosi. As the Little Girl, Springall is creepy and ominous but not in an over-stylized way. She says and does some terrible things but does them in such a matter-of-fact way that it delays your reaction/repulsion at her behavior. That doubles the impact.
Franciosi gives the same suppressed performance, at least in the film’s beginning. You empathize with her as you watch her squirm under her mother’s thumb and cheer for her when she finally starts listening to her muse. Then you watch in growing horror as you see the wheels of her mind wobble, then go completely off the rails. By then, though, it’s too late.
