150 Word Review: 'Stopmotion' (2023)
The meat puppets
Aisling Franciosi's Ella is an aspiring stop-motion animator smothered by her infirmed, tyrannical mother, an accomplished stop-motion animator with arthritic hands. Ella's boyfriend is nice but doesn't understand her, and his sellout sister is an idea-stealing stop-motion animator for an ad agency. In this movie, stop-motion animation is very popular.
Oh, and Ella is also losing her mind. After her mom has a stroke, a ghost tells her to animate dead woodland animals. She has, as they say, a full plate.
The low-budget indie horror movie Stopmotion blends reality with fantasy, but the fantasy is more interesting than the stilted dialogue and dimly lit interiors of reality. The macabre little wax-and-flesh-covered armatures give the most emotionally nuanced performances.
Director Robert Morgan's movie is a moody diorama inside a diorama. The pacing is as slow as the stop-motion animation process, but the movie finds its way to a sad, lonely place.
Random Ranking
Top 5 Evil Dolls/Puppets
5. Blade, 'Puppet Master' (1989)
4. Billy, 'Saw' (2004)
3. Fats, 'Magic' (1978)
2. Megan, 'M3GAN' (2022)
1. Chucky, 'Child's Play' (1988)
So should I watch this or not?
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