‘Stopmotion’ Review: Art Infects Rather Than Imitates Life in IFC’s Partly Animated Creepshow
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic English animator Robert Morgan has deservedly accrued a shelf of awards over the past quarter-century or so for shorts like “The Cat With Hands,” “The Separation” and ickily awesome “Bobby Yeah.” Their macabre, surreal nightmares are at once threatening and oddly winsome, with a sinister aesthetic equally redolent of the Brothers Quay, early David Lynch and the painter Francis Bacon — all of whom count among the director’s admitted influences.
He’s been in no hurry to adopt a longer format, and his first feature underlines the wisdom of that reluctance. Not unprecedented among his work in its mix of animated and live-action elements, “Stopmotion” demonstrates the difficulty in stretching such a singular, fantastical sensibility to suit a full-length project’s storytelling requirements.
This “Repulsion”-like tale of a fragile young woman’s descent into madness, starring “The Nightingale’s” Aisling Franciosi, arrests attention with its vivid, escalating eruptions of grotesque imagination.
What’s problematic here is the real world those intrusions should trouble — masterful as he is at creating the stuff of nightmares, Morgan (as well as co-writer Robin King) is much less assured handling the character actions, psychology and dialogue outside his heroine’s fevered psyche. “Stopmotion,” which IFC opens on U.S.
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