Gabe Perkins

Clay and Felt, Embalmed and Imbued: Horror and the Qualities of Stop Motion

January 2025. Written for Horror Film class. Unedited after final feedback.

“The clay which Prometheus used when he fashioned man was not mixed with water but with tears.”

(Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, Fables 516)

When searching for films that intersect both the medium of animation and the horror genre, one will find that stop motion takes up a majority of the imbrication. Yet, this is still a relatively small pool of films that exist, especially feature-length and for adult audiences. Still, this raises the question: why is stop-motion used so frequently and successfully as opposed to other methods in horror animation, like CGI and 2D? Animation theorists, stop motion theses, classical theory, and key texts including The Wolf House (2018) and Mad God (2021) are helpful in approaching the intricacies of the medium and the genre. The qualities of stop motion animation (process, time, space, industry) specially excel in key concepts of horror film study including the uncanny and the abject. The familiar and primal ways of thinking emerge, while gore and bodily boundaries are immediate and applicable.

Qualities of Stop Motion

The materiality of stop motion creates a real and immediate presence that other forms of animation cannot duplicate. In an interview, Dan Martin, the special effects artist for the horror film Stopmotion (2023), cites the importance of stop motion opposed to other effect techniques: “There's an innate aesthetic deficit in computer-generated imagery when you're trying to do horror stuff because there's such an immediacy to practical objects… it's still a tactile object. It's still physically in the space… it's a real object. But if a digital effect doesn't work 100%, it's immediately, completely artificial” (Martin). Additionally, these objects become more grounded and bound to physical formalities – thus there are more limits and greater efforts to achieve movements and maneuvers that are easier done with other techniques. For instance, a figure standing on one leg requires more technical attention than it would in a CGI animation tool. Stop motion gives weight and rules making it similar to the confines of reality. Groundedness is especially important for the horror genre, which deals with visceral, bodily feelings and limitations – the stakes are heightened.

The existence of Stopmotion makes it clear that the uneasiness and feelings of fear and dread derived from stop motion exist in the public consciousness. The film centers around the creations of a stop motion animator coming to life, starting a violent rampage. Horror films building off common anxieties and uneasiness of childhood are extremely prevalent including Child’s Play (dolls), Five Nights at Freddy’s (animatronics), It (clowns). The unease created by stop motion shows an awareness of the traits of the medium, such as the twitchy movement, which the film exploits. This further cements the well-recognized uncanniness of the stop motion medium, especially building off the association of stop motion and childhood, in which the medium is so popular (Wallace & Gromit films, Laika Studios, Rankin/ Bass).

The laborious work of stop motion permeates scenes with greater attention to detail and intentionality. The amount of time and effort that goes into the process of animation is well-known, with endless explorations of behind-the-scenes and written material on the technique. The laborious efforts of animators are easy to convey: “Stop motion animation entails a shooting rate of fourteen frames per second, meaning that a normal ninety-minute stop-motion animated film requires a minimum of 75,600 unique shots with puppeteers moving the puppets and sets between every single shot. The medium of stop-motion animation, even with all of its technological advancements, does not allow for the same rapid production of CG animation” (Troutman 192). This time consuming process changes the way one interacts with what they’re seeing in striking and uneasy ways: “The deconstructing process whereby stop motion animation is created… imbues its subjects with a deliberateness that is unnatural.” (Crawte 5). There is a greater attention and fascination to what is ultimately put to screen; what is moving and visibly placed in the image is intentional and meant to be there. On one level there is an appreciation of the art form’s intensive work, but this hyper-intentionality does not reflect the way people experience the world, including unplanned and voluntary existence. Additionally, whereas live-action fiction often becomes immersive and invisible, stop motion artistry becomes obstructive.

Is it also important to address the way violence and gore are made more visceral and alarming because of imbued deliberateness. Distortion and destruction of the body is a common sight in older audience stop motion, evident in the sizable subgenre of stop motion shorts involving body horror and gore on YouTube. This makes it clear that there is something striking about the way carnage feels in stop motion. With the overwhelming intentionality Crawte recognizes, gore and pain become amplified; it is disturbing that the creator has observed and studied the body and moments of suffering and proceeded to transfer it into such a time consuming process. Details are perceived in a preeminent way. The appeal and intrigue of this violence may come in its simplicity or an urge to feel and destroy material, such as squeezing wet clay in your hands. Live action violence, where violence takes on an unintentional and spontaneous linearity, doesn’t have the same effect as stop motion which, by nature of the process, must be meticulously planned and executed. Additionally, gore in live action is fake and the viewer can dismiss them as unrealistic to the real world. Meanwhile, animation creates a new world, in which the figures and brutality inflicted upon them seem true. One can’t separate the real humanness and special effects. The stop motion itself is an effect. As opposed to other forms of animation, the materiality of stop motion grounds the violence and positions it in a tangible space with tangible materials.

Additionally, the use of photography in stop motion separates it from other forms of animation. 2D and CGI animation tends to conjure and exist in a new and separate world and rules, but stop motion is so physically and materially tied to our own that the extensive process is felt more deeply. Andre Bazin illustrates the reality photographic reproduction affords: “In spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-represented, set before us, that is to say, in time and space” (Bazin 14). The sets and figures on screen, through photography, are grounded and realized in our own world’s concepts of space and time.

In a horror context, Bazin’s words “we are forced” take on a new meaning; these strange creatures, moving objects, and grimy worlds confront the temporality and nature of our world. On one hand, these are real objects that have occupied space, on the other their activity and animation is unreal and constructed. There becomes a tension between the aspect of reality brought on by the photographic process and the absence of true life documented.

Andre Bazin’s “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” is particularly rich in discerning how the process of stop motion is more apt for horror than other animation techniques, particularly in the way stop motion interacts with space, time, and photography. Although Bazin is referencing realism and reality, these ideas are still very relevant to stop motion: “Rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part” (Bazin 12).

Here there is another tension between and the constant reminder that figures and objects are manipulated by unseen human hands and an objective mechanical process. Animation is a form where the artist is felt in every aspect, especially stop motion due to the tangible materials it employs (sometimes even including fingerprints or visceral indents and impressions). Not only the material, but the choppiness of movement and the photographic process are a constant reminder of the presence of an outside force and cannot be ignored. The realism Bazin advocates for and the way in which we become immersed in film are complicated; the mechanical process isn’t “satisfying” in the same way as live-action, but is instead off-kilter and strange.

Our knowledge of the space and scale in stop motion and the ways in which it is played with in The Wolf House and Mad God. In her thesis on stop motion, Jane Shadbolt argues “part of the strangeness and denaturalisation of stop motion animation is in how the camera shows these accumulations of distorted cues of scale and how they occupy cinematic space” (Shadbolt 143). The viewer is aware that most stop motions are small scale models, but ultimately the sizing is meant to reflect an accurate, human scale. In this way, the smaller scale makes it seem as though one is looking into a dollhouse or microcosm of a miniature world. The “accumulations of distorted cues” are evident in Mad God in which the viewer follows a human character who, in production, is really a small-scale figure. But the viewer is also confronted with shots presenting the character’s leg walking in what is obviously live action. Additionally, there are some moments of fully live-action characters in the world of the film, impacting the viewer’s awareness of the process and the scale they are perceiving – the viewer must question the scope and magnitude of the fictional world. The Wolf House is an outlier example. The figures displayed are more humanly scaled and placed inside an actual house which the film takes place in. This defies expectations and diminishes the safety and distance that scaled down worlds facilitate.

The Abject

Julián David Saldarriaga Cardona defines the abject in his analysis of The Wolf House: “It refers to the visceral, instinctual reaction of revulsion and rejection that arises when encountering something that disrupts the conventional boundaries of the self and the familiar: bodily fluids, decay, death, and the non-human” (Saldarriaga Cardona 107). The qualities of stop motion are found in each of these categories. This is pronounced, even in live-action films that briefly employ stop motion like The Evil Dead (1981) for moments of revulsion, evident in the ultimate decay of Ash’s friends in an excessive mess of the body and its fluids. Again, the materials of the process are impactful; objects substitute other objects, such as oatmeal for body matter, calling attention to what lies in our own bodies and what leaves them.

The pull and intrigue of the abject connects with the intrigue of animation itself, making it especially suited for the horror genre. In the essay “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection,” the conflict of the abject is addressed: “It is repulsive, provoking horror and disgust, but at the same time it exerts an irresistible fascination and attracts our gaze to its very horror” (Krečič and Žižek 70). The abject conjoins with the way animation is perceived, according to Tom Gunning: “If theory begins as an effect of astonishment, it develops through curiosity, and the wonder triggered by animation leads us to consider the nature of time in cinema through the technological production of the instant, the minimal increment of temporality” (Gunning 41). Animation and knowledge/ wonder of the process bolsters the “irresistible fascination” of the abject, combining the repulsive fascination of subjects with the very medium in which it exists.

Additionally, stop motion allows for exploration of the abject in its material flexibility. In his analysis of The Wolf House, Saldarriaga Cardona emphasizes the way figures complicate borders of the body: “Throughout the film, her [Maria’s] body, as well as those of Pedro and Ana, seem to contort, meld with the walls, and transform themselves in a constant cycle of destruction and creation. The materials from which the characters’ forms and the house are made are intentionally evident to the viewer; tape, threads, clay, and paper are disfigured and twisted” (Saldarriaga Cardona 110). Although 2D and CGI can imitate textures, weight, and lighting, stop motion connects to actual objects and presence in our tangible reality. Still, these objects are replaced with new materials; skin and water are replaced with paper and plastic. We are forced to question the corporeal – these objects still spark life and make noises mirroring those of the real thing. What are the limits to the ways we assign life to animation? Additionally, abjection is seen in the way characters move becomes 2D and move across walls, making it seem as though characters are leaving parts of themselves as they pass, smeared and greasy. Again, the boundaries of self are questioned, emphasized by the process.

The clear, cut boundaries of self and the body are constantly questioned in The Wolf House. Cardona connects the abject to the characters of the film: “They are no longer perceived as confined to the boundaries of a self but instead as subjected to the relentless dictates of the invisible hands that create and destroy them” (Saldarriaga Cardona 112). Additionally, the film explores boundaries of humans with animals, materials, space, and death. These boundaries are probed even in the omission of actual humans. The absence of real people casts a deep loneliness, while the unseen hand becomes sinister – we yearn for human presence. Therefore, this deficit of human presence hovers over the inanimate. In The Wolf House, the comforting and soothing voices of the different narrators creates a disjunction between audio and soiled visuals – voice, mind, and body are disconnected. The film twists the sweet lull of a parent’s fairy tale into a nightmare of material grime and decay.

The Uncanny

Uncanniness is a well discussed topic in stop motion studies, mentioned in horror analysis as well as generically. Shadbolt connects the medium with Freud’s theory: “Stop motion animation can then be seen as an almost perfect example of Freud’s concept of the uncanny, where the familiar and understood combine unsettlingly with the repellent and grotesque” (Shadbolt 109). One of the major producers of uncanny is the jerkiness and slightly unnatural movements of characters, demonstrating how “familiar and understood” motions and figures become otherworldly. Additionally, the way we are confronted with strange movements force one to reflect and become aware of our bodies and dynamism, which come naturally and are unnoticed.

Additionally, the uncanniness of perceiving life and perceiving death are prominent in stop motion: “Stop motion animation is especially capable of conveying an experience of the uncanny because of the technical processes through which an impression of movement and life is created from stillness, inertia and death” (Crawte ii). Confronting death and decay in the familiarities of life, as well as seeing life in the deceased, troubles the familiar. This can appear very literally in stop motion, like animator Ladislaw Starevicz using dead beetles for his films. The medium often deals with inanimate objects, meant to stand still without the handling of a human, coming to life and operating themselves. Dolls, puppets, and other childhood toys also come to life, infusing life into the lifeless, and surrounding the period and innocence of childhood with terror and uncanniness. This is evident in The Wolf House, in which the movement of characters ceases occasionally while the camera continues to move, forcing the viewer to reflect and acknowledge the ways we assign life to movement; there is an unsettling realization of how easily one can assign life to something inanimate, dead, or even become comfortable and familiar with them.

In his initial defining, Vincenzo Maselli illustrates the underlying uncanniness of the medium: “Puppets are inanimate objects designed to tell stories through small movements and breaks that completely alter the dimension of time and create a gap between the time of the animator's work and that of the movement perceived by the public” (Maselli 54). This is emphasized in Phil Tippett’s Mad God, which was filmed on-and-off over the course of 33 years (also reflecting the financial difficulties of the medium). In this way, stop motion operates almost out of time, without the flow of time that linear progress of live action entails, or even the smoothness of 2D and CGI, in which the films exist in their own less grounded realities. The horrors become less distant and unplaceable.

Likewise, stop motion lends itself to ideas on domination and submission, connecting with the uncanniness of confirmed primal beliefs. Jack Halberstam emphasizes how the hand of the stop motion conflicts with the usual way films are approached: “These relations of dependency, of submission even, are precisely the ones that we go to the cinema to forget” (Halberstam 178).There is a constant attention but absence of the animator, disrupting the flow and conventions of cinema. This is particularly pertinent in the way viewer identification is often stripped away in older audience films. In Mad God, the introduced “protagonist” is not sympathetic, remaining neutral and disinterested in the atrocities happening around him, and he is killed off early in the film. The rest of the film becomes almost aimless and lonely – there is a yearning for human presence, ultimately found but not satisfied in the creations of the animator. The titular “God” thus becomes the unseen animator, bringing to mind ancient creation myths which often form humans from clay. Again, Freud can be invoked; old and archaic ideas reemerge and we are confronted with a primal, prehistoric version of ourselves. Yet, the utter nihilism of the film dismisses any comfort derived from these spiritual or religious possibilities. The primal also connects with abjection, with ancient myths often including reference to gods putting their blood and spit to create humans, demonstrating the abject origins of the body.

Bazin’s analysis of ancient practices of life and image preservation becomes relevant. He connects photography with his concept of “the mummy complex” (fitting for the topic of this essay) in which he sees a human desire to stop time, specifically with objects imbued with spiritual meaning: “It is this religious use, then, that lays bare the primordial function of statuary, namely, the preservation of life by a representation of life” (Bazin 10). He goes on: “Photography, unlike art, does not create the eternal; it embalms time. It simply places time beyond the reach of its own decay” (Bazin 14). Stop motion complicates this, both eternalized through photography but skipping through time in its tedious process as well as confronting the decay of humans and material. Still, it embalms time and the figures/statuettes with a primal sense of life.

The characteristics of the medium and the way they interact with the uncanny and abject adds depth to themes of creation, death, decay, the undead, power, and control. Tactile materials and awareness of the process position concepts of horror firmly within the medium. Additionally, ancient ideas and knowledge about creation and imbuing life in the inanimate demonstrates the importance of stop motion materiality, particularly with clay. The Wolf House and Mad God offer rare examples of feature-length stop motion for older audiences and reflect the difficult process and market these films face. Still, there is much more to reap from animation and stop motion in new theory, with classical film theory surprisingly relevant and apt for comparison and integration. Stop motion uneasily reminds us of the characteristics of cinema; the viewer is confronted with choppy images reminiscent of the film reel and the falsity of living people reproduced through rapid movement of these images – reworking and disrupting viewing conventions we are familiar with – in a way the medium uniquely molds.

Works Cited

Aesop., and Laura Gibbs. Aesop’s Fables. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Bazin, André, et al. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What Is Cinema?: Volume I, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2005, pp. 9–16.

Crawte, Derrin. “Darkness Visible: Contemporary Stop Motion Animation and the Uncanny.” Anglia Ruskin University, 2017.

Gunning, Tom. “Animating the Instant: The Secret Symmetry between Animation and Photography.” Animating Film Theory, edited by Karen Beckman, Duke University Press, 2014, pp. 37–53.

Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn283. Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.

Krečič, Jela, and Slavoj Žižek. “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 43, no. 1, 2016, pp. 60–83. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26547671. Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.

Martin, Michael. “Stopmotion: Creating the Puppets, Suits & Gore Effects.” Stan Winston School of Character Arts, 2024.

Maselli, Vincenzo. “The Evolution of Stop-motion Animation Technique Through 120 Years of Technological Innovations.” International Journal of Literature and Arts, vol. 6, no. 3, 2018, pp. 54–62. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20180603.12

Saldarriaga Cardona, Julián David. “Abjection and Metamorphosis in the Aesthetics of Stop-Motion Horror in La Casa Lobo/The Wolf House.” Brumal: Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico, vol. 12, no. 1, Spring 2024, pp. 105–28.

Shadbolt, Jane. “The Impossible Qualities Of Illusionary Spaces: Stop Motion Animation, Visual Effects And Metalepsis.” University of Sydney, 2018.

Troutman, Megan Estelle. “(Re)Animating the Horror Genre: Explorations in Children'