12 Stop-Motion Movies Made For Adults

In an interview at the red carpet premiere of his stop-motion adaptation of "Pinocchio," Guillermo del Toro made the following comment: "We wanted to show that animation is not a genre for kids, it's a medium. Animation is film. Animation is art. And it can tell stories that are gorgeous and complex" (via Discussing Film). While his version of "Pinocchio" — which takes the classic children's story and restages it to be set during the rise of Mussolini in fascist Italy — may be a perfect example of the kind of beautifully-constructed nightmare fuel that del Toro excels at, the truth is that the medium has been telling stories aimed at an older audience for many years now.

Perhaps more so than any other form of animation, stop-motion possesses a tactile quality that can be pushed to create feelings of warmth and repulsion in equal measure. For a certain breed of filmmaker — equipped to push what the medium is capable of — stop-motion can be effectively used to examine all sorts of human issues. While this often results in films that fail to make their money at the box office — and are best avoided by the younger audience that most animation tends to cater to — it also results in the kind of breathtakingly impressive works of art like the ones listed here. With plenty of variety and imagination between them, these are some of the best stop-motion animations made for adult audiences.

The majority of American readers may not be very familiar with this deeply experimental fairy tale — known in its native Chile as "La Casa Lobo." But anyone who has any enthusiasm for the craft of animation should absolutely check it out because the techniques used to bring this story to life are completely unlike anything you'll have seen. On the surface, the plot is relatively simple. It follows a young woman named María (voiced by Amalia Kassai) who has escaped from a German colony and takes refuge in a seemingly abandoned house occupied by two pigs, whom she adopts and attempts to humanize.

This setup might already seem a little much for kids, but that's before we get into how the story is told. Constructed to feel like one continuous shot, the characters and environments are assembled and animated in real-time using a variety of stop-motion elements that include paint, papier-mâché, elaborate puppets, and much more. The resulting concoction plays like a grim folk tale that's brought to life with a sense of wonder as well as some deeply unsettling imagery. There's also the matter of the wolf character, who stalks through the periphery of the film menacing the protagonist in voiceover, bringing a shroud of darkness whenever his presence nears. This puts "The Wolf House" into downright horror territory, with the kind of visuals that can easily give children nightmares.

Few filmmakers can lay claim to the kind of bold eccentricity that Charlie Kaufman exhibits on a regular basis. The Oscar-winning writer and director — who has worked on such mind-boggling classics as "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" — turned his attention to stop-motion with 2015's "Anomalisa." Co-directed with Duke Johnson, the film is characteristic of Kaufman's work in that it is predominantly focused on the interior life of a man who struggles to connect with other people. The man in question here is Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a motivational speaker who has become so detached from the mundanity of modern life that he hears every other person — regardless of gender — speaking in the monotone voice of the character actor, Tom Noonan.

All of this is upended one fateful night when he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose seemingly ordinary nature strikes Michael as extraordinary. They spend an extended evening getting to know each other intellectually, before getting to know each other physically. The graphic depictions of puppet intercourse would normally be more than enough to regard this film as not being intended for children, but the existential despair and distinctively middle-aged concerns present in the rest of the film would likely hold little interest for young ones either, rendering this film a strictly adults-only affair.

Anyone who only looks as far as the adorable character designs in "My Life as a Zucchini" would be forgiven for assuming that the film features a bunch of cutesy kids getting into a bunch of kid-friendly adventures. And while that's broadly true to a certain extent, this PG-13 drama is not exactly as innocent as it looks. Taking the frequently used animation trope of child protagonists having only one or none of their parents, the film explores this concept in a way that's both deeper and more realistic. The titular Zucchini (nicknamed as such by his alcoholic mother who suddenly disappears one day) joins a group of fellow kids at an orphanage and finds himself making significant friendships that help him better understand himself and his situation.

The film comes from an impressive pedigree — having been written by "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" director Céline Sciamma — and earned enough praise to warrant an Oscar nomination for best animated feature of 2016. A frequent source of acclaim was its earnest and mature handling of topics that are frequently considered taboo, such as the trauma that abusive or neglectful parents can inflict on children, and how that shapes their ability to make friends and understand their place in the world. Teenagers should be able to appreciate it, but anyone younger may not fully grasp it yet.

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Sometimes you can tell that a film is intended for more adult audiences through its themes, its subtext, or its more mature subject matter — dealing with topics most children will not be able to fully understand or appreciate. Other times, you can tell they're made for an older crowd because it contains "pervasive strong crude and sexual content, language and some drug use" (via Rotten Tomatoes). This certainly applies to 2015's "Hell and Back," a raunchy buddy comedy about a trio of best friends and carnival workers voiced by Nick Swardson, T.J. Miller, and Rob Riggle. When they jokingly take — and subsequently break — a blood oath, one of the three finds themselves getting sucked into Hell, with the pair left behind embarking on a quest to rescue him.

This is not a film that has much use for subtlety, and as such figuring out why it's not child-friendly is not a difficult task. The film's dialogue is laden wall-to-wall with the kind of edgy and offensive humor that would make "South Park" proud, with plenty of references to sexual acts and organs. Even the Devil himself (voiced by Bob Odenkirk) gets in on it, trading immature barbs with the rest of the stacked cast which also includes Mila Kunis and Susan Sarandon. Nobody will ever mistake "Hell and Back" for high art, but it has its audience — it's just not advisable for kids to be part of that audience.

One storytelling device that stop-motion animation — or for that matter, any form of animation — can excel at is the anthology. If you take a series of loosely connected narratives and give each one a unique visual identity, you have a piece of film that really showcases what the medium can do. A great example of this comes in 2022's "The House," which serves up three tales that all revolve around the titular abode. The first sees a family of humans take up residence in the house, only for the parents to become so obsessed with it that they start to become one with it. The second sees a mouse (voiced by Jarvis Cocker) attempt to renovate the house before it becomes infested with bugs, and eventually with bug-like mice.

These first two segments are certainly not child-friendly, as they utilize the inherent unreality of felt puppets behaving like people to create an atmosphere of dread and inevitability, with some body horror elements that will likely be too frightening for impressionable viewers. The third segment, which focuses on a cat (voiced by Susan Wokoma) attempting to return the house to its former glory while the world outside it has disappeared under a mass flood, is perhaps the most gentle of the lot. That said, it does still deal with existential crises about how we cope with the world coming to an end around us, which may prove to be a bit too heavy for young ones to enjoy.

Described as a handmade stop-motion fairy tale for adults, this micro-budget independent feature was almost exclusively animated by director Christiane Cegavske over the course of 13 years (via Fangoria). The love and attention to detail really show as it tells a dialogue-free story about a conflict that brews between a group of wealthy and noble white mice, and the peasant creatures who dwell under an oak tree. The mice hire the creatures to craft a beautiful doll for them — with the red string being used as the adorning touch. When the creatures find that they love their creation too much to give it up, the mice decide to steal it for themselves.

The plot is hardly the point here, as much of the film is focused either on the oak dwellers journeying through the fantastical world that Cegavaske has created or on seeing the mice gradually succumb to the corrupting influence of the blood tea. It's all about the experience, which is heightened by an oppressive, unsettling soundscape and the escalating threat of debauchery and violence against the characters. Despite some initially peaceful imagery that looks like it might be right at home in a child's fairy tale, "Blood Tea and Red String" creates a haunting atmosphere that is far less likely to delight young viewers and far more likely to send them home with nightmares.