‘Stopmotion’ is a horror film that follows stop-motion animator Ella (Aisling Franciosi). Stuck under the thumb of her ailing and demanding mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet), Ella struggles to discover her own voice as she is occupied by finishing her mothers last film.
Following a tragic incident, Ella relocates to a new space to finish the work her mother had started. Growing tired of the project, the young artist soon begins taking cues from a young neighbour girl, and begins to explore new ideas and starts making her own project.
Examining the struggles of the aspiring artist, Franciosi delivers the perfect image of a stifled and smothered creator who is unable to and discouraged from discovering her own way in the medium of stop-motion. Breaking free of the overbearing and smothering environment created by her parent, Ella is free to discover for herself where her ideas and her creativity may take her.
Passionate and excited about her new project, Ella goes ahead and starts the new film. Borrowing from the story told to her by the strange young neighbour girl (Caoilinn Springall), Ella embarks upon creating a visually unsettling and thematically alarming tale of a girl running from the Ash Man. Disappointed with the figure of the Ash Man, the young girl tells Ella he must be constructed of something dead, leading Ella to the nearby forest to salvage the carcass of a fox and create the Ash Man anew.
Ella becomes more consumed with discovering the following parts of the story from the young girl, becoming increasingly unhinged and determined to finish the tale. Sacrificing her social connections and using progressively more disturbed methods of constructing her characters, Ella resorts to flaying herself to use the flesh for her characters. Spiraling ever downward, Ella ultimately resorts to beating her boyfriend (Tom York) and his sister Polly (Therica Wilson-Read) who try to restrain her, and uses their flesh to finish her characters.
Experiencing a complete breakdown, Ella finds herself constructing a life-sized version of the Ash Man and the girl from her film from Tom and Polly’s flesh, with the Ash Man now coming to life and accosting Ella. Ella then finds herself in a life-sized version of her film set, with the little girl watching a playback of Ella’s film, closing on the woman bleeding to death in her apartment. The film concludes on Ella climbing into a satin lined box and closing the lid on herself.
Probing into the nature of art and craft, ‘Stopmotion’ approaches the creative process from the perspective of a suppressed and restrained artist. Ella’s overbearing mother serves not only as a barrier to her artistic expression, but rather promotes her incentive to want to create independently. The trouble begins when she realizes the urge to create is greater than her ability to come up with novel ideas, resulting in her gradually sinking into despair and a complete breakdown as her creator’s block forces her to resort to new and radical expressions of the overwhelmingly dark thoughts that consume her.
Unsettling in its presentation, the stop-motion sequences serve as a stark reminder that the medium serves well in delivering deeply disturbing, gory and unnerving scenes. Introducing the Ash Man, the film presents a new type of horror, formed of mortician’s wax, to convey Ella’s deep-seeded fears of failure and impending demise. As the story progresses, so does Ash Man’s influence over the creator, ultimately destroying her. Overbearing and ever-present, the Ash Man maintains his hold on Ella as she fearfully accepts the situation, acknowledging the all consuming nature of her work.
An intense meditation of the agonizing struggle of artistic creation, ‘Stopmotion’ depicts the effort and pain that goes into the endeavor of making something. Taking chances and beginning an independent undertaking is never easy, with the film serving as a clear reminder and warning that it can take its toll on the artist. Beautifully nauseating and at times even repugnant, ‘Stopmotion’ successfully depicts the difficulties in commitment to art, highlighting that it will take everything you have to truly make something special.
Score: 3/4
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