STOPMOTION (2024)
Label: Acorn Media International
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Cert. 18
Duration: 93 Minutes 39 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround, DTS-HD MA 2.0 Audio Description with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Robert Morgan
Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Tom York, Caoilinn Springall
In Robert Morgan's Stopmotion (2023) we have a tortured artists and somewhat of a social misfit named Ella (Aisling Franciosi, The Nightingale) who is a stop-motion artist, who at the start of the film is assisting her domineering mother (Stella Gonet, Spencer) finish her final film. Her mother's hands have been crippled by severe arthritis and she is unable to manipulate the stop-motion puppets herself. Ella is clearly quite talented but the collaboration with her mother is very one-sided, her mother proving to be rather stifling to her own creative instincts, and her input is not valued. However, when her mother suffers a debilitating medical emergency Ella sets out to finish her mother's film, but eventually ends up channelling her newfound creative freedom into a new project.
In Robert Morgan's Stopmotion (2023) we have a tortured artists and somewhat of a social misfit named Ella (Aisling Franciosi, The Nightingale) who is a stop-motion artist, who at the start of the film is assisting her domineering mother (Stella Gonet, Spencer) finish her final film. Her mother's hands have been crippled by severe arthritis and she is unable to manipulate the stop-motion puppets herself. Ella is clearly quite talented but the collaboration with her mother is very one-sided, her mother proving to be rather stifling to her own creative instincts, and her input is not valued. However, when her mother suffers a debilitating medical emergency Ella sets out to finish her mother's film, but eventually ends up channelling her newfound creative freedom into a new project.
With the help of her boyfriend Tom (Tom York) she sets up a makeshift studio in a new apartment and begins making her own stop-motion film, after initially struggling a bit with inspiration she finds her muse after arrival of a mysterious little girl (Caoilinn Springall) who suggests that the story should be about a young girl lost inthe woods who encounters a scary entity called the Ash Man, This fuels Ella's creativity, but then the little mysterious girl begins to make strange suggestions, such as constructing the puppets out of the rotting flesh of a dead fox she found in the nearby woods, it's then that things start to get really weird. It seems that Ella has finally finding her creative voice, albeit under the strange influence of a nameless young girl, and finding herself consumed by her creative impulses, struggling with her own demons in the process, she begins to unravel in a way that brought to mind Roman Polanski's Repulsion as well as Lucky McKee's May.
The deeper Ella dives into her stop-motion film the more nightmarish her actual life becomes, peppered with creepy stop-motion footage with her creepy puppets infiltrating her actual life, her muse influencing her to act is darker more violent ways that threaten to upend her life. The creepy imagery of this one certainly strikes a tone that is hard to shake, the character designs of the girl lost in the woods and the malevolent entity stalking her are grotesque and nightmarish looking, and the scene of the Ash Man entering her own reality and tearing open her skin is quite unsettling. The cracked-sanity / blurred reality narrative filtered through the tortured artists is pretty interesting, I don't think it's 100% fully realized, at least not to its fullest potential, but it is a visually intriguing experience. Once things start getting grotesquely surreal I was hooked and the cast is phenomenal, especially Aisling Franciosi. I think your milage may vary depending on your appreciation for arthouse weirdness, it's certainly not a general audience crowd pleaser, but this is easily one of my favorite Shudder offerings of 2024.
Audio/Video: Stopmotion (2023) arrives in region-free Blu-ray from Acorn Media International in 1080p HD framed in 2.35:1 widescreen with uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo or 5.1 Surround with optional English subtitles. It looks and sounds terrific and we get a handful of extras by way of a 4-min Interview with star Aisling Franciosi; a 10-min Interview with director Robert Morgan, a 10-min Behind-the-scenes of Stopmotion, and Trailers for Mad God and Skinamarink. The single-disc release arrives in keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork.
Special Features:
- Interview with star Aisling Franciosi (4:15)
- Interview with director Robert Morgan (9:35)
- Behind-the-scenes of Stopmotion (9:26)
- Interview with star Aisling Franciosi (4:15)
- Interview with director Robert Morgan (9:35)
- Behind-the-scenes of Stopmotion (9:26)
- Trailers: Mad God (1:14), Skinamarink (1:43)