Stuffed

FESTIVAL REVIEW

Stuffed boasts a premise almost too good to be true, starting with Bernie (Harry Melling), who lives an invisible and insignificant life. His mother has dementia, and his routine consists of making sandwiches at a factory, watching television at home, trimming his nails, and searching newspapers for obituaries of other Bernies. Knowing this is where his life is headed, with little of interest expected along the way, he spots an advertisement that promises something different. It comes from Araminta (Jodie Comer), a taxidermist searching for a lonely soul willing to help fulfill her lifelong ambition: preserving a stuffed human body. Bernie is initially disgusted but slowly warms to the idea, and as they plan his eventual preservation, they grow closer. Expressed through original musical numbers by Joss Holden-Rea, and expanded by director Theo Rhys from his 2021 short film, Stuffed sets out to offer a strange and moving experience, yet it keeps backing away from the premise it sets up.

It opens promisingly with the spooky sight of a woman carrying an unidentified body as crows watch from above, followed by a dynamically staged musical number in which the elderly residents of a care home sing about the sad routines their lives have become. Close-ups of elderly body parts and some nail trimming for good measure give these early images a tactile quality, and we seem to be entering a creative, macabre world that recalls Tim Burton in his prime. The trouble becomes apparent once Stuffed introduces its two leads, each receiving an “I want” ballad with an unremarkable melody, sung thinly by Comer and Melling, which drains the film of its opening energy.

After that, the film settles into a world dominated by grays and browns, deliberately dreary but rarely visually interesting. Rhys is afraid to embrace the outlandish sensibility its premise demands, with conventional coverage of the two stars replacing whatever dynamic invention those opening images had. Beck Rainford’s production design occasionally finds clever details, particularly in their contrasting apartments, which look completely different while somehow feeling equally depressing, but everything remains oddly normal and clean for a story about a woman searching for someone willing to let her stuff his corpse. Light cold blue surrounds Bernie’s acceptance of his unwanted fate, while his newly purchased purple shirt, a color associated with death, has almost the opposite effect, as if preparing for how he will look when dead is what finally gives Bernie life. These ideas remain clever, isolated touches but never develop into an expressive visual language.

Equally disappointing are the musical numbers, with the staging growing increasingly plain while the melodies blur together through compositions and performances that offer little variation. Joss Holden-Rea’s orchestrations occasionally supply some force and life, with the instruments easily overpowering the lyrics, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when those lyrics can be as simplistic as “I guess I need to settle for only death.”

Comer and Melling perform these boring songs, giving arguably even more boring performances. For such a story, we need to be convinced of the intensity and passion of these two people, both for each other and for their strange desires. Both have passable voices and are capable of belting a note, but their performances are ultimately predictable and uninteresting. As Bernie, Melling reprises the same awkwardly stiff traits he brought to The Queen’s Gambit and, more recently, Pillion, feeling like the most vanilla casting possible for the role, where you get almost everything the character is about simply by looking at him. Comer is even less of a disappearing act, badly miscast as the strange Araminta, with every eccentricity feeling manufactured and a wig and thicker eyebrows doing much of the heavy lifting in her transformation. She often looks uncomfortable simply being there, never quite finding the passion that should make this bizarre woman magnetic in her own peculiar way. The script certainly doesn’t help, leaving Araminta’s trauma and her attempt to cope with it by preserving people as lifeless specimens surprisingly barren, but Comer rarely makes the little that is there compelling.

Outside the leads, Stuffed only shrinks as it progresses, with no compelling secondary character or outside complication disturbing Bernie and Araminta’s increasingly intimate preparations. Even the practical and moral insanity of their plan generates surprisingly little friction, when such a rich premise could (and should) have escalated into weirder, darker, and funnier places. There is a potentially affecting arc somewhere as the two find affection in their shared emptiness, with the underlying preservation becoming an unusual expression of love. Yet for such an intriguing premise, the film lacks the passion, humor, and personality to make those ideas resonate. For a film combining taxidermy, body horror, romance and an original musical, Stuffed is reluctant to become truly weird, ending up as stiff and lifeless as one of Araminta’s specimens.

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