Meat Puppets

Film: Stopmotion
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

One of the more interesting stories, at least potentially, that crops up now and then is about the connection between art and artist. The idea of creation as a sort of insanity is a common theme, and it’s one that is easily understood by anyone who has tried to create anything more complicated than a cheeseburger. In this case, as the name Stopmotion suggest, the act of creation here will be a stop motion film that will more and more blur the lines between sanity and insanity.

Before we get too far in terms of the narrative of Stopmotion, we do need to talk about the actual animation of the film. Most of the film is not animated, but because of what is being created, a great deal of it will consist of stop motion work. Opinions on the film have been varied and run the gamut, but the actual animation is top notch, as good as you’ll find anywhere. If you are at all interested in this kind of animation and don’t mind some upsetting gore, this is a film you will want to watch at least for the way in which the story is told.

Suzanne Blake (Stella Gonet) is an aging stop motion artist who has crippling arthritis and can no longer really do the work. She enlists her daughter Ella (Aisling Franciosi) to help her with her current film, which is about a cyclops who makes a deal to see her own future but sees only her death. Suzanne is a bit of a tyrant and is frequently abusive to Ella, and eventually Suzanne suffers from a stroke and becomes comatose. Ella decides to complete the film as best she can.

Ella’s boyfriend Tom (Tom York) invites her to live with him while Suzanne is hospitalized, but instead she moves into a building managed by Tom to continue making the film. It is here that she meets a young girl (Caoilinn Springall), who takes a minor interest in what Ella is doing, but declares it is boring and suggests instead a new film about a girl pursued by a monster she dubs the Ash Man. Eventually, Ella complies with this request, an also complies with the requests to make the Ash Man out of increasingly disturbing things—a steak at first and then the body of a dead fox found in the forest nearby.

As the film continues and the girl forces Ella deeper and deeper into the story, Ella’s psyche begins to fragment, and what is happening in her film also appears to be happening to her in real life. Soon, her hallucinations are not differentiated from the real world as she falls deeper and deeper into the story of the Ash Man and what will happen with each night of the story.

There are parallels here to a number of other stories, of course. Anything like Stopmotion, where the main character is essentially creating something that looks like it simulates life, is going to have a strong Frankenstein vibe to it. It’s also very similar in a lot of ways to a film like May, where the line between what is alive and what is being created from things that were alive continues to be moved, and often in what feels like the more horrific direction.

There is a lot here that is also really upsetting in terms of body horror. If you don’t have a fairly strong stomach, there are some moments—especially near the end—that are very high on the gross out scale, at least for me. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I tend to have issues with medical horror moments.

In truth, a lot of what happens in Stopmotion isn’t that different from what you expect from this basic story. Creation is bringing something new into the world, and sometimes what is birthed is terrible. We’ve seen films with an unreliable narrator before as well. Can you trust what Ella is seeing? This seems unlikely as the film continues, but some of what we are seeing is clearly real.

It's genuinely the actual stop motion that makes Stopmotion worth seeing. The dolls that are being used (eventually) are very disturbing, made from mortician’s wax and dead forest animals, but the actual animation is extremely good, as good as any that you’ve likely seen. Much of it is near-seamless. If nothing else, the technical achievement here is noteworthy and makes the film worth seeing.

That said, this is a very upsetting film in the last fifteen minutes, upsetting enough that it’s not one I’ll likely watch a second time.

Why to watch Stopmotion: The stop motion work is top notch.
Why not to watch: There are some moments that are very unpleasant.