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I remember being very excited about this film when I saw the trailer. It was moody, atmospheric and it felt original.

Now that I’ve seen it, is my opinion still the same?

In a preview I made of this movie I said this might be “pure scary shit” - I think two of those three words are correct. Scary is the odd word out.

It’s not that the movie was bad, well not all of it at least. There are some awesome parts of this movie that had me grinning ear to ear. But the bits in-between involving the annoying main character and her annoying young friend had me reaching for the something else in my periphery to distract me from what I was watching.

PLOT

Ella lives in the shadows of her controlling mother, a legend in the stop motion movie scene. After her mother falls into a coma, Ella decides to rent her own studio and make her own version of her mother’s film.

While at her new location, she meets a little girl who has a story to tell her about a girl lost in the woods with a man chasing her down. As she slowly reveals the story to Ella, Ella turns the story into a movie.

But the lines between reality and the movie begin to blur, having a drastic effect on Ella’s mental state.

ABOUT THE FILM

I hope you like slow burn movies, because that’s exactly what this one is. And I don’t like movies like this.

Which is a shame because there are some quality parts of this film. The story she is animating is interesting and creepy enough to be its own film, while the quality of the stop motion animation used in the film is outstanding, with a gritty horrific visual composition that reminds me of the kinds of short films I used to watch on late Saturday night TV here in Australia (Eat Carpet on SBS is the name of the show!)

And that’s probably, what I feel anyway, is the biggest problem with the film. It feels like it should have been a short movie, and because it’s not there all these other elements added to pad out the run time and ultimately we end up with something that’s not in the least bit interesting if you don’t like any of the characters.

I didn’t like any of them. The little girl is far too annoying, Ella is just a bit too insane for my tastes and the twist at the end is telegraphed fairly early on, which takes some of the suspense out of the finale. And if you’re not into movies about mental illness, than this is just another element of the film that quite fatiguing.

But those stop motion scenes? They’re to die for!

What are my overall thoughts?

Well at least the movie lived up to its title. The stop motion scenes are a real showstopper. Unfortunately, the rest of the film I couldn’t care less about.

MOVIE DETAILS

Genre Horror
Director Robert Morgan
Starring Aisling Franciosi, Stella Gonet, Tom York
Original Title Stopmotion
Country of Origin UK
Release Date 7 October 2023 (UK)

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