Stopmotion director says his brand of animation is necromancy

polygon.com:

On May 31, Robert Morgan’s queasy horror movie Stopmotion will start streaming on Shudder. But hardcore horror fans will have a chance to see the live-action/animation hybrid in theaters early, starting Feb. 23 — and they shouldn’t miss the chance. It’s best experienced in a theater because of the way its chilling visuals, twisty story, and especially gristly, grisly soundscape all set the tone.

Stopmotion follows a young stop-motion animator coping with the death of her domineering, celebrated animator mother, and dutifully trying to continue her work. But then she’s drawn into a disturbing new project that starts coming to life for her — maybe literally. Aisling Franciosi (star of The Nightingale, Jennifer Kent’s chilling follow-up to The Babadook, and a featured player on The Legend of Vox Machina and Game of Thrones) plays the animator, Ella, whose grief, defiance, and determination to make a name for herself all warp her in dark directions, which play out on screen via the animation she creates.

Director and co-writer Robert Morgan, a stop-motion animator known for his creepy shorts, including The Cat with Hands and Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt, makes his feature debut with Stopmotion, and he used his career in the field to give the movie a particularly tactile, detail-driven feel that balances out its gory horror elements. Polygon talked to him at the 2023 Fantastic Fest film festival in Austin, Texas, about where he put himself in this movie, how he managed all the animation himself, who he considers the pope of meat-puppet animation, and why stop-motion is a necromantic art.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: The title of this movie is ambiguous in an interesting way — there are a lot of different ways to potentially read “stop motion.” Were you focusing on those different layers?

Robert Morgan: Definitely. I spent a long time trying to think of the right title for it, and “Stopmotion” came up early on when we were writing it. I