A troubled stop-motion animator battles her own macabre creations in what turns out to be a fight for her sanity. That’s the general premise of the aptly titled “Stopmotion”, a chilling psychological horror film and the feature-length debut from director Robert Morgan. There was some good buzz surrounding the movie following its release earlier this year. I can certainly see why.

“Stopmotion” stars a captivating Aisling Franciosi who was so good in last year’s criminally underrated period horror gem “The Last Voyage of the Demeter”. Here she plays Ella Blake, the daughter of an accomplished stop-motion animator, Suzanne (Stella Gonet). Their mother-daughter relationship is a key component of the story. Suzanne is unable to use her hands due to severe arthritis, so she instructs while Ella does the work. “She’s the brains and I’m the hands”, Ella says at one point.

After a severe stroke leaves Suzanne in a coma, Ella determines to finish her mother’s final film. With the help of her boyfriend Tom (Tom York), she rents an apartment and sets up a studio. But making the movie without the overbearing Suzanne in her ear proves difficult. “I don’t have my own voice” she says, revealing the insecurity and lack of self-confidence brought on by her mother’s constant belittlement and lack of support. Things only get worse from there.

While at her apartment, Ella encounters an overly curious and unmannerly young girl (Caoilinn Springall) who takes an immediate interest in her film. The girl calls Ella’s story boring and encourages her to tell a new one. I won’t spoil where things go except to say Ella finds new inspiration in some dark and troubling places. Her stop-motion creations grow more macabre with each iteration and her work of fiction begins to meld with her painful reality.

Morgan’s patient pacing stands out in the first half, but his imagination really kicks into overdrive during the third act. He hits us with crude yet exquisite stop-motion animation sequences. We also get jolts of gruesome body horror that will make even the most hardened horror fan wince. As far as technique, he uses a fascinating assortment of close-ups and shifts in focus to ratchet up the tension and discomfort.

But perhaps most vital is Franciosi’s hypnotic performance. She offers a transfixing portrayal that claws away at Ella’s suppressed emotional trauma, slowly exposing a psychological peril that takes the character to the brink of madness. Franciosi works at just the right temperature – patient yet revealing early on; terrifyingly deranged later. She’s a perfect fit for Morgan’s morbid vision which, like the mortician’s wax used to create Ella’s puppets, takes more sinister forms as the movie descends deeper into its dark and gory depths.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS