Stopmotion

There is something undeniably disconcerting about stop-motion animation. Regardless of whether it is the fun of the Aardman output, the fantasy of Ray Harryhausen or the darker hues that Tim Burton explored with tonnes of examples in-between. Regardless there’s a weirdness about it; the kinks in the movements, the off-kilter features; just unsettle.

These features mean that it lends itself well to fantasy, horror and surreal. Harryhausen is the obvious fantasy example, horror is now possibly defined by the demented Mad God, the surreal with Jan Švankmajer.

Stopmotion directed by Robert Morgan, co-written with Ronin King is more in line with the latter’s weirdness though nowhere as extreme as the former’s nihilism.

Ella (Aisling Franciosi) is making a stop-motion animation with her mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet) overseeing the project. Dressed in dark smocks Ella toils over the delicate settings that are never good enough for her mother. Suzanne was a pioneer in the area, held in great esteem by the industry, now crippled by arthritis, has to work through her daughter whom she continuously humiliates.

A stroke puts Suzanne in hospital. Ella drops that project and begins her own in rented accommodation arranged by her boyfriend Tom (Tom York).

However the film within a film turns when a strange little girl (Caoilinn Springall) arrives, condemns Ella’s ideas as boring and proceeds to suggest her own. Setting the film in a forest with a vicious entity as well as using the remains of dead foxes and raw meat to create the puppets.

Gradually Ella begins to lose control of her project and her mind as reality and the dark fantasy of the film merge.

There’s never that much doubt that Ella is in a precarious mental state as the real and fantasy world she’s creating meld, or that the little girl is a realisation of her deliberating mental process throwing up options to consider. Only that extreme thinking begins to assert itself over the balancing caution and the mind’s safety mechanisms begin to shut down.

There’s isn’t any relief for Ella, or the viewer, as her behaviour becomes more extreme, as does the violence. This is accentuated by the single dark studio, with the forest and Ash Man creature relentlessly encroaching.

Mad God is a clear point of reference but on a more psychological level there’s a sliver of Katherine Deneuve’s Carol in Repulsion. Her lonely mental disintegration in a flat leading to horrific actions bears some analogy, with Ella’s fate.

Morgan’s debut is unsettling on a number of levels from the grotesque puppetry through the little girl as the occupier and manipulator of Ella’s mind to Ella’s catastrophic mental collapse. It’s not an easy film to like though plenty to admire and think about.

Stopmotion will be on Shudder from 31 May 2024