Finally saw Stopmotion (2024). Here is my interpretation and why I loved it.

As a heads up, this entire post is likely going to be one giant spoiler so if you haven’t seen the film Stopmotion I’d highly advise clicking away. Also with that film, I advise ignoring any reviews and watching it blindly. Form your own opinion as most of the negative reviews aren’t about the technicality of the movie.

So, I really enjoyed the film, and it has stuck in my brain like a little worm. So I am going to talk about my interpretation of it and risk the “pretentious” comments below because I truly enjoyed what this movie said and how it said it, especially below the surface level metaphors.

On the surface we see a girl who worries incessantly about perfection because of a abusive mother. Her mothers ungrateful behavior is rampant, even down to criticizing her daughter for how she cuts her steak when she cannot do it herself. We also see the idea of Stopmotion film making being used to portray that perfectionism as well as the idea of “not living my own life” the way Hereditary does with doll houses. Pretty surface level but still a wonderfully easy to grasp and interesting metaphor for the trauma and abuse our protagonist went through.

When the mom has a stroke, our protagonist is left without guidance and without purpose, leaving her unable to distract herself and trauma begins to resurface in a rage. Her younger self begins to visit her, imploring her to make a film about trauma they endured in the past. Our protagonist now sets off to heal her inner child, but has no footing on how to do so appropriately and ends up using self-destructive means to do so. She envelopes herself in her past, partying, and drugs (I mean come on, she may not have touched the acid but…) and begins completely losing her sanity. I firmly believe she has a drug problem because of the tourniquet scene and the “death” of her partner and his sister, showcasing how low someone with untreated issues can potentially bring others down when they are at their lowest.

As the little girl says, she has to put a piece of herself in the film, which she does both figuratively and literally with the piece of her skin. Now the ending I feel is up to a bit of interpretation, so here is what I gathered from the film she made and the ending. The ash man is someone who deeply took advantage of her as a child. I believe this man sexually assaulted her, impregnated her, and she got an abortion at too young of an age. I also believe this took place quickly and not over three nights, but the child inside our protagonist is remembering the events in pieces and in the storytelling process, using days to showcase that separation.

When the man touches her, he places a seed in her mouth. That seed is shown hovering inside of her as an egg until it breaks. This is why I believe the above mentioned idea of her having an abortion. I also believe her mother did not care about this event or blamed her daughter for the event, leading our protagonist to bury it deeper and be deemed sick and twisted by her mother.

The ending is her trauma literally devouring her. She does not recover so she allows the ash man to eat her entirely, then realizes the Stopmotion was nothing all along, simply an extension of her demise. She is now the doll as well as completely and entirely dead. She believes her inner child is healed as her adult self crawls into her coffin, but she has healed nothing.

Basically it is a sad fucking movie about trauma and death. The idea of Stopmotion is far more in the background then the title and trailer would have you believe, and is simply a showcase of how deeply troubled our protagonist is. I found the storytelling in this film so fascinating, as we have a child too mature for her age, and an age regressed adult battling out their inner demons together.