Stopmotion (2023)

 

Genre: Horror/ Animation

Time: 1h 34mins

Director: Robert Morgan

Quick Summary: A stop-motion animator struggles to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother.

This one goes out to all the freaky deeky stop-motion people 

It definitely did its job of grossing me out with the body horror bits, as the stop-motion creations were actually disgusting in a good way. This sets out to disturb you as much as it possibly can and it's done through really well-done smooth stop motion animation, the most disgusting looking things ever made, and spi d design that is done so well it grossed me out. Who knew squelchy meat puppets would be perfect for a gross stop-motion film.

The rest of the film is where it lost me. We don't really learn much about the protagonist aside from her relationship with her mother isn't great. Any time she's not doing the stop-motion animation she is so goddamn boring too. As for the rest of the characters, well, input plot points driving devices and there you go. That's all they're there for as they're basically cardboard cutouts. We have the boyfriend, the neighbour, the boyfriend's sister, all with zero personality.

I was honestly really bored by the halfway point as mostly it's a slog to get through before anything happens. I don't think it helped that they threw in a couple of random subplots halfway in that really did not matter. Sometimes for a film like this, it is hard to keep people invested when you want them really only to focus on one thing, you shouldn't then pad it out with other things.

Ultimately, this is super bland and boring. A lot of points are from the visual side; how good the stop-motion animation is; how gross it looks; the sound design; and all the camerawork to do around that is so clever. I have complained a lot about how boring it is, but really it's not a bad film it just suffers from having barely any storytelling in it.

5/10