Stopmotion   Starring: Aisling Franciosi Distributor: Acorn Media International RRP: £TBC AB2087 5 036193 020872 Certificate: 18 Release Date: 01 July 2024

Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi) lives with her strict, overbearing and controlling elderly mother, who is a stop motion artist. So oppressed is her life that she must sneak out at night just to spend time with her boyfriend and, thus, gets very little sleep. When her mother dies, Ella feels obliged to continue her project, but it isn’t long before she rents a studio apartment to create her own stop motion work. Her creativity is immediate but is missing a spark. Her muse arrives in the form of a little girl who tells her a story about a girl in the woods and a frightening figure call the Ashman who stalks her. Each night the story becomes more real, with the stop motion figures being continuously recreated and the line between fantasy and reality becoming increasingly blurred...

It is said you should write about what you know, and that is certainly the case here. This is quite an original concept at the hands of real life stop motion animator and first-time director Robert Morgan. Of course, Ray Harryhausen was the master of stop motion in a career spanning more than 40 years, with classics such as Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. So, if you’re going to emulate the master, do it differently. It probably exists, but I have never come across stop motion horror before – and certainly not mixed with live action. Fans of body horror will love this, but you shouldn’t pigeonhole this film. It is so much more. What Morgan has created here is an oppressive mood of unreality which is both artistic and distasteful. It builds-up a palpable sense of dread and unease. You don’t enjoy it as much as experience it. Only afterwards do you fully appreciate its merits.

I should take a moment to sing the praises of Aisling Franciosi (The Fall, Game of Thrones, God’s Creatures). Without the believability and conviction of her character being consumed by her work to the point that it takes over entire being, I don’t think this would have worked half as well. Extras include: An Interview With Aisling Franciosi; An Interview With Robert Morgan; and (a short) Behind-the-Scenes of Stopmotion.

8

Ty Power