Films for Breakfast

Creating art is one of the most daunting things a person can go through, especially when you put your entire heart and soul into creating something you want to resonate with the people who watch it. Robert Morgan’s feature-length debut film Stopmotion takes a very literal and horrific approach to the idea of giving yourself to your art and makes an absolutely grody and character-focused horror film out of it. The film follows a stop-motion animator named Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi) as she struggles to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother, who she was creating the project for. 

One of the most impressive elements of Stopmotionis how much it nails the feeling of being unsatisfied with not only your art but how others respond to your art; to pour your entire time and energy into something only to have it not feel quite satisfactory. There’s an inherent pain in that feeling, and Robert Morgan and Robin King’s screenplay understands that before the film even teeters into body-horror territory. Another big reason why this element of the film works as well as it does is due to Aisling Franciosi’s performance, who plays the greyness of Ella fantastically. Of course there’s an inherent relatability to everything she goes through and therefore a lot of empathy for the character, but the film isn’t afraid to challenge the audience’s perception of the main character and how we feel about her as she makes more and more questionable decisions. 

When the film goes head-first into body-horror in the third act, I was truly impressed by what I saw – I found myself genuinely squirming and covering my eyes at how gnarly it all was. This is mostly due to how well-done the practical effects and gore are, and how they blend so perfectly with the rest of the film. Even aside from the gore, all of the actual stop-motion sequences in the film were truly impressive and effective with what each sequence was trying to convey. It’s nice when a film that’s about the craft of a certain art-form actually understands and utilizes said art-form! This should come as no surprise, as director Robert Morgan has had experience within stop-motion animation for years; and this film perfectly blends the world of live-action and stop-motion together in a horrific way.

The big deterrent to all of these fantastic elements of Stopmotion is simply the pacing, specifically in the middle section of the film. The film begins with a really effective and atmospheric introduction to Ella as a character, and it feels that after her life, career, and relationships are established the film does feel a bit meandering and loses its momentum rather quickly. I find that a lot of directorial debuts suffer from this same issue, especially when it feels like they are juggling so many ideas but are failing to string them together in a truly cohesive and well-rounded way. 

Despite the pacing issues and even some elements of the script and themes that I found to be slightly undercooked, I was still largely impressed by the direction from Robert Morgan, especially for a feature-length directorial debut and found Aisling Franciosi’s performance to be so magnetic that I was locked in even when the film itself was slowing down. Stopmotion is worth watching despite its shortcomings for being truly unique and having some truly visceral body-horror at play that isn’t for the faint of heart. I’ll take something that is ambitious and a bit messy than something uninspired any day of the week. 

3/5