Stopmotion – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE BEAST WITHIN – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

July 29, 2024July 29, 2024 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alexander J. Farrell, Ashleigh Cummings, Caoilinn Springall, child actors, horror genre, James Cosmo, Kit Harrington, spooky movies, Stopmotion, The Beast Within

Told from the perspective of a little girl called Willow, The Beast Within follows a family on a ramshackle rural farm who harbor a great secret the child is slowly beginning to understand. Aided by her mother Imogen , Willow begins to make sense of her father Noah’s unusual behaviour, which includes unexplained excursions into the woods at night and strange absences. With the support of her doting grandfather Waylon, Willow discovers the truth about her father, testing both her loyalty and Imogen’s when it comes to just how far they will go to keep the family together.

Interviews

Caoilinn Springall chats Puppets, Horror and THE BEAST WITHIN – Nadine Whitney interviews

July 29, 2024July 29, 2024 Nadine Whitney Alexander J. Farrell, Caoilinn Springall, child actors, horror genre, spooky movies, Stopmotion, The Beast Within

Caoilinn Springall is only eleven years old and already she has an impressive resume of genre films. She starred with George Clooney as Iris in the science fiction dystopian film The Midnight Sky and was in an episode of Doctor Who. Her most recent starring role is as Willow Avery, an isolated young girl who finds out a terrible secret about her family, in The Beast Within. She shares her take on all of it with Nadine Whitney.

Reviews

STOPMOTION – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

February 28, 2024February 28, 2024 MaryAnn Johanson Robert Morgan, Stopmotion

Stopmotion, the feature debut from British animator Robert Morgan, gets at the enigmas and anxieties of artistic creation like no film I’ve ever seen before. This is a movie in which style is substance. Perhaps more unsettling: This is a uniquely disturbing movie for anyone who grapples with, you know, their own fertile yet unknowable mind.

Reviews

STOPMOTION (Sitges 2023) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

October 23, 2023October 26, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Aisling Franicosi, British horror, Sitges 2023, Stopmotion

Ella (Aisling Franicosi) is a stop-motion animator who has largely lived in the shadow of her mother who was an icon in the same field. With old age rendering her mother incapable of executing the kind of physically nuanced work the craft requires, Ella effectively becomes her hands and assists her mother in making her final film. But when her mother dies before she can complete it, Ella is psychologically rocked not merely by grief but by questions surrounding her own identity as both an artist and a woman. Deciding to make her own movie, Ella spirals increasingly out of control as fact and fiction collide and nothing around her is what it appears to be.