Stopmotion

Robert Morgan is an expert in stop-motion animation and he showed his skills in the short Bobby Yeah, but the feature film format doesn't suit him that well, as I thought he kept things on a very short leash and there's no twisted deviousness. The film does try to bring a breath of fresh air to the horror genre, but there are few horror attractions and the slower pace doesn't even make it any proper fun. Breathing life into the puppets with meat and a dead fox was an interesting idea and the final appearance was pretty creepy, but something interesting doesn't really start happening until 15 minutes before the end and that's too late. It's somewhere right at the halfway point. Sympathy for the idea, but a lot more could have been done with it. 55%. (2024-03-16)

This film has a premise similar to Evil Ed or Censor. It’s especially close to the latter. Personally, I found Stopmotion more enjoyable than Censor, and in this showdown of tonally similar movies, it takes the win for me. Robert Morgan’s film shines with its occasionally unsettling atmosphere, which doesn’t always hit the mark but sometimes manages to deeply unsettle the viewer — especially when the stop-motion creatures made from carcasses are involved. I loved the concept of a retired legend in the handmade animation field, striving to finish her final film despite being hindered by arthritis. Unable to work on her own, she tyrannically directs her creatively uninspired daughter on exactly what to do. However, this intriguing setup quickly shifts as the story veers off, piling on clichés and heading exactly where I anticipated. (2023-10-10)