Stopmotion

IT was American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson that once said, “the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.”

This pretty much sums up the premise of director Robert Morgan’s disturbing psychological horror about a stop-motion animator who struggles to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother.

Now streaming on Shudder, Stopmotion is one of the most perverse, discommoding, downright bizarre and truly unforgettable films I have seen in a long time. The stuff of nightmares and/or high art, Morgan’s debut feature is as unorthodox as it is original and ghastly with it.

Fantastical night terrors meets snuff movie, the film tells the story of Ella (Aisling Franciosi), a stop-motion animator living under the thumb of her exacting mother (Stella Gonet), a famous animator whose hands are failing due to arthritis.

When not kowtowing to her conceited mother in the studio, Ella is caring for her every other need from cutting her food and putting up with her continuous insults. She feels in life, just like the marionettes they work with on screen, a glorified puppet that has no influence and every action and decision carried out for her by others.

When Ella’s mother has a stroke she decides it is time to strike out on her own. But without a guiding hand, this insecure young woman becomes lost, totally adrift in a tumultuous current of unfulfilled individuality and emotional instability.

Stopmotion is gruesome in places. For all its artful lighting and stilted beauty, viewers will be quickly caught off guard by the depths of depravity and violence that Morgan subjects us to. I was left squirming at some of the more visceral and baroque scenes, which boil over with debased hints of Francis Bacon and David Lynch.

(4/5)