Misunderstood Monsters: ‘Stopmotion’ and the Nature of Creation
By Matt Konopka
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Welcome fellow monster kids to Misunderstood Monsters. This is where I, Matt Konopka, sink my fangs into all sorts of beasts, ghouls, and creatures from above while I search for the humanity behind their frightening exteriors. From monster favorites such as The Wolf Man to obscure monsters like the whistling Shadmock, there is more to these fiends than bad hair days and gooey tentacles. Within them all is a piece of ourselves.
When an artist sits down to create, it is as if we’re being pulled by the distant song of a siren’s call. Our worries are loosed upon the wind. Our bodies tossed into a tumultuous sea. Where we’ll end up, we don’t know. Don’t care. All that matters is the cool feeling of the waters of creation lapping against our flesh. For there is treasure out there deep within the darkest parts of the sea, glowing and priceless and beautiful. We trade our blood, our sweat, our tears to find it, a small price to pay to bring something only we could into the world.
Few experiences reach such pinnacles of joy as creation, yet it’s only natural to fear what we may encounter to get there. Fear of what the journey may uncover. Fear that it may take too much from us. Fear that we may fail. We wonder if this thing we are seeking may devour us whole, as it does Ella (Aisling Franciosi) in Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion (2023).
Morgan’s film follows Ella, the daughter of Suzanne Blake (Stella Gonet), a world-renowned stop-motion artist. Suffering from the encroachment of debilitating arthritis, Suzanne has made her daughter, her “poppet,” into her hands, directing Ella’s movement of her puppets for the last film she hopes to finish before she dies. When her mother has a stroke and falls into the deep slumber of a coma, Ella sees it as her chance to make her own film. All she needs is an idea. And she’ll do anything for inspiration…even if it means spilling some blood to get it.
Early on, Ella meets a kid (Caoilinn Springall) — a manifestation of her inner child, we later learn — who offers bits of an unsettling story in return for Ella’s submission to using raw meat for the flesh of the film’s star puppets. The sadistic muse tells her the tale of a little girl lost in the woods, running from a creature dubbed The Ash Man (James Swanton), “a man no one wants to meet.” A ghoulish figure with a face stretched into the image of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and coated in ash, he is indeed a thing that scares most artists: the monster lurking in our thoughts. He is the fear of failure.
In the little girl’s tale, the Ash Man creeps closer towards his victim over the course of three nights. First, he sees her. Then, he touches her. Finally, well, perhaps you can imagine what comes next. It is this simple yet poignant yarn that rips out the tumors of fear from beneath an artist’s flesh and holds them up beneath a dim light. We worry that our creation won’t be good enough. We agonize over whether it will be accepted, cast out, or worst of all, met without a word. Always, the Ash Man is in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. Daring us to meet his gaze.
Ella wants nothing more than to be a respected artist and escape the towering presence of her mother. However, her dreams of glory underestimate the dedication it takes to reach such heights. Without inspiration, she turns desperate. Isolation. Drugs. Screaming and clawing and fighting to purge herself of whatever it is that resides within her armature of bones and tissue. They say the best art comes from putting ourselves into the work. And it does. During those more difficult projects, the feeling can be equated to ripping out our own vocal cords and stitching them into our creation to avoid that most basic of criticisms: “It has no voice.” So, we oblige. We give it our sound. Our flesh. Our soul. But we do it with love and the knowledge of knowing where to draw the line. Thus is the difference between any true artist and Ella.
Terrifying as he may be, the Ash Man is not the villain of Stopmotion. That title belongs to Ella and Ella alone. Morgan and co-writer Robin King paint a portrait of the pain artists sometimes endure to give birth to their creations, yet they also shine a cold light on the pretenders who crave the status of “artist” without putting in the work. Nepo Baby would be an apt way to describe Franciosi’s character, a woman who sees herself above others despite having achieved nothing. She dismisses boyfriend Tom’s (Tom York) music because he makes a living by working in an office. She turns down a job at an animation studio offered by Tom’s sister, Polly (Therica Wilson-Read), saying, “I’d kill myself if I had to work at a place like that.” In her mind, being her mother’s daughter should be enough to get her whatever she wants. Never mind that she hates her mother. Yes, Suzanne is overbearing. Yes, she is harsh. But it isn’t as if she doesn’t give her daughter a chance. When asked by Suzanne what ideas she has for the film, Ella blanks. A creative block…or a realization that she craves fame rather than creation?
Ella’s ego allows her to see everyone around her as puppets. Tom. Polly. Suzanne. They are tools to be used for her career, nothing more. Skin-prickling sound design informs us of the metallic creaks she hears in the bones of the people around her, their flesh hers to manipulate. She allows the idea of sacrifice for art to become literal and turns towards murder to ignore the strings hooked into her own appendages. She imagines nothing else matters but her work. Not her mother, not her friends, not even herself. And she’s wrong. As everyone around her mentions at one point or another, they know how to control the hungry fire of creativity. Sure, they may have their burn scars, but it does not consume and destroy them the way it does Ella. Because she feeds that fire for the wrong reasons. She doesn’t respect or love it. She merely thinks she’s owed it.
As Roosevelt once said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. All of us worry about the Ash Man visiting our door with a heavy knock. But instead of letting that terror control us, an artist uses it. It’s okay to taste ash and fail. To fail is to learn is to become better. So, we invite the Ash Man in. Share a couple bottles of beer or some hot tea. Understand that he is only as scary as we allow him to be. Because when we become the puppets of our creations, our fear of failure, we risk being pushed back into the box like Ella. Voices silenced forever within wooden bodies too afraid to move. And as any artist would tell you, we have too much to say to ever let a little thing like fear stop us from screaming it into the world. 🩸
About
Matt is a writer and wannabe werewolf who began his love of horror at the ripe old age of 3 with Carpenter’s Christine. He has a horror podcast called Killer Horror Critic which he does with his wonderful wife and has previously been published on Bloody Disgusting, Shudder’s The Bite, and Daily Grindhouse. You can also find more of his reviews and ramblings at his blog, KillerHorrorCritic.com.
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