Review: Stopmotion is entertaining in the moment, but not all that engaging or memorable after the fact. A work of function and form, but not nearly as groundbreaking or redefining in an era of genre picture glory. A step-up from recent Shudder releases, which is still a promising sign.

Stopmotion Movie Review

Perhaps no subsection of filmmakers is more dedicated to their craft than stop motion animators. For years, the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Wes Anderson, Phil Tippett have worked to prop up a microgenre of the industry that breaks their backs to put together one still frame after another, culminating in motion very distinct to the human eye.

And to make it in this field, you need to be obsessed – compulsively obsessed, even. That’s the case for Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi), who feels the need to finish her mother’s final work while she rests in a coma at the hospital. It’s a form of guilt for Ella, often feeling one of her true talents in the world can’t go to waste over a case of animator’s block.

Until she meets a little girl (played by Caoilinn Springall) that sparks some new demonic creativity, which results in gruesome consequences for everyone involved. It’s a story fit perfectly for the sort of budget and grime-core much of Shudder’s material usually relaxes in, only Stopmotion tends to feel a bit more succinct and polished.

Reviews for Movies like Stopmotion (2024)

And that’s almost certainly because the movie’s title doesn’t go to waste; there’s a lot of visually engrossing stop motion to go around here. Stopmotion plays like a schlocky B-picture quite well, with the gore and intensity ratcheting up frequently without interruption. Director Robert Morgan makes a movie that indulges heavily in the concepts and themes inherent with creatives that work in stop motion animation.

And yet, I couldn’t help but feel like the film tries too hard to dig under your skin. It’s weird, but it’s intending to be really weird, even to a point where it becomes rather cryptic and ambiguous for a film that plays it straight for so long. It descends into madness halfway through, but the payoff doesn’t justify what it takes to get there.

It’s as if this middling horror entry still doesn’t have the bite and budget to compete with the genre’s best works in recent years. Stopmotion is entertaining in the moment, but not all that engaging or memorable after the fact. A work of function and form, but not nearly as groundbreaking or redefining in an era of genre picture glory.

Genre: Horror