Stopmotion delights in bathing its audience in the darkness of Ella’s slow and tragic descent into hell as her fractured reality shatters into a million pieces before our eyes. Stopmotion is currently awaiting a UK release date.
At what point does art become an obsession, and a past childhood trauma become a horror of no escape? This question surrounds director Robert Morgan’s story of artistic mania, unresolved trauma and insecurity in his feature debut, Stopmotion.
Ella (Aisling Franciosi) is a stop-motion animator living with her demanding and cruel mother (Stella Gonet), a legendary filmmaker slowly losing her power due to crippling arthritis. But despite her disability, Ella’s mother has a final stop motion film in production that Ella must complete on her behalf as she barks instructions. Ella is offered no creative input, just a string of demands as she moves each figure a millimetre at a time in the dark studio she calls home. But when her mother suffers a devastating stroke, Ella frees herself to embrace her artistic voice for the first time.
Ditching her mother’s project, she is steered by a mysterious young girl who visits her daily to create a new work of art, “The Ashman.” But as the story of The Ashman consumes her, animation, trauma and grief converge to create a living, breathing nightmare of no escape. A powerhouse performance from Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) stands front and centre in Morgan’s debut feature, alongside some genuinely unnerving and terrifying stop-motion artistry. Stopmotion delights in bathing its audience in the darkness of Ella’s slow and tragic descent into hell as her fractured reality shatters into a million pieces before our eyes.
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