Entertainment
Jodie Comer’s ‘Stuffed’ Is Officially the Strangest Movie You’ll Love This Year
The expectations saddled on a movie musical are difficult to meet. There has to be spectacle, impeccable performances, and amazing music to carry the story until the credits roll. This typically requires massive sets and intricate costumes, all backed by a budget that could also fund an expedition to the moon. These are not easy endeavors, so to see a movie as original and distinct as Stuffed manage to tell a uniquely macabre musical love story so effectively is an achievement.
With bold orchestral arrangements, a gothic visual aesthetic, and amazing performances from leads Jodie Comer and Harry Melling, Stuffed stands out as a triumphant musical experience. It establishes a brutal and unforgiving world with its opening shot and never lets up, all while showcasing the beauty and safety that exists in both love and death. So it’s all the more impressive that this is not an adaptation of an established stage production, but a completely original story from director Theo Rhys and co-writer Joss Holden-Rea, .
What Is Stuffed About?
The tragedy begins with a corpse or two; animals, dead or close to it, being dragged from the side of the road by the reclusive taxidermist Araminta (Comer). You can tell from the care that she gives to the deceased creatures that she truly does care for them, in her own way, and that she longs to take care of them for eternity. But Araminta doesn’t just want to care for animals—she longs to stuff a human specimen that she can preserve. She just hasn’t found the right candidate yet.
Next, we meet Bernie (Melling), a hapless nobody toiling away making sandwiches in a factory. It’s here we get a clearer sense of the depressing world of the film, mundane and bleak with grey skies and foggy fields. Bernie is having trouble finding purpose here, and is constantly reminded that the odds are stacked against him. He only wants to be remembered; but with a mother battling dementia who can’t even recall his name, he’s faced with the fact that he’ll never have a meaningful legacy.
This drives Bernie into the arms of Araminta, who slowly cajoles him into giving up his life so that she can ultimately fulfill her own ambitions—he decides to allow himself to be taxidermized so that he, too, may live forever as the first human being to be preserved, stuffed and “immortal.”
From this point, Araminta and Bernie grow closer and learn to understand each other in ways they’ve never been able to with anyone else. This complicates their plans, of course, but not before they force each other to grow and face their own trauma and fears in unexpected ways. It’s not the most original love story, but it’s effective because of its musical backbone, which serves to push the movie even when it starts to drag.
Stuffed ‘s Musical Numbers Steal the Show
There’s a moment when you first start watching a movie, a good movie, where something happens early in the runtime and it hits like a punch to the gut. An intricately blocked sequence, a beautifully framed establishing shot, or an editing technique indicating the pace and tone of the journey set to take place. In Stuffed, that moment occurs early on, when the orchestral score swells with sinister, foreboding strings.
The music and score are much more traditional in a musical sense, leaning more towards Les Miserables than the more contemporary Broadway and West End shows that define the medium’s oeuvre nowadays. Cello and violin arrangements are as effective in building the tension as they are at easing it. And the vocal performances from Comer and Melling match the instrumentation, allowing both performers to rise and fall with the music in climactic and dramatic ways. Both are impressive and provide enough variety to carry what is essentially a two-hander musical, even though the opening scene makes use of a wide cast of singers.
And it would not be a musical without set pieces. For the most part, Stuffed is subdued and shot like Tim Burton was working on an indie budget. The aesthetic is gothic but not surreal; it’s definitely of a certain late-’80s-to-early-’90s time period. It is filmed intimately, so don’t expect to see grandiose dance numbers with backup dancers filling the space just for the sake of a musical number.
But the big acts in the film are earned by the story, such as when Bernie makes a show about quitting his job in a feint to convince his coworkers that he’s probably suicidal (an effort to lay the groundwork for his eventual disappearance, so that he can be, you know, stuffed). It doesn’t go over, because Bernie isn’t memorable, so he finds newfound confidence in his relationship with Araminta and tries again—this time, there’s a lot more pomp and circumstance, and a dash of class warfare.
The film’s best musical sequence occurs when the pair fake Bernie’s death with a suicide note, some extracted teeth, and an exploding car. The joy of Bernie letting go of his past life, of giving in to Araminta’s needs, and the two finding strength in each other whilst the vehicle erupts into flames behind them, gives way to an unexpected connection, setting up the epic number “Nothing’s Changed.” This is the greatest moment of the movie, and the most quintessential musical number of the show. If it were on stage, it would be perfectly timed to lead into the intermission; here, it sets up a final act that escalates until the credits roll.
Jodie Comer and Harry Melling Will Break Your Heart
Stuffed is most effective when it is simplest. It uses identifiable tropes from modern filmmaking, such as the use of blue and gold lighting and color grading to portray the dichotomy of life and death, realism and romanticism, practicality and optimism. Many scenes are filmed in dark houses or brutalist factories, creating a world where it’s difficult just to go on living.
It evokes a sense of safety in death, which Araminta promises to Bernie at every step of their journey. The rural setting provides vast and foggy fields that add to the film’s gloom, while the interior locations all have a rustic charm, even if they’re slightly evocative of a Tim Burton production. The amount of detail and care packed into Stuffed, with the budget that it has, is impressive in nearly every frame.
But while the production is inspiring, and the music and performances are great, the film’s script tends to overstay its welcome. There are moments where it lulls with minor musical interludes to carry some of the weight. The entire stretch where Araminta coaxes Bernie into her plans is a little flat, though we do get some great flashes of the characters’ idiosyncrasies in these scenes, including a funny bit with a jar of toenails.
These lulls cease as the characters’ romance grows, and their charm begins to take over the screen. By the time we get to the final act, everything has escalated to a degree that you can only expect in a movie like this. And when the conclusion finally hits, its impact has an emotional weight comparable to some of the best stage shows you can find in a theater. It’s tragic, poetic, and hauntingly beautiful, all at once. There are some concessions in the plot and some logical fallacies, but fans of musicals are likely to oblige them, as it’s no different from many other popular shows. Stuffed creates its own world and lives in it, confidently and comfortably.
The ultimate triumph of Stuffed, as a wholly original musical film with a twisted plot, is how cohesively all the elements come together. Built off the backbone of an epic soundtrack, two powerhouse performances, and the vision of Rhys and Holden-Rea, the movie manages to capture the dread of loneliness and insignificance, and effectively replaces it with acceptance and belonging. We might not ever get another musical like Stuffed, so cherish this one because it’s actually here.
Stuffed
- Release Date
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September 10, 2026
- Runtime
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117 minutes
- Director
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Theo Rhys
- Writers
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Theo Rhys, Joss Holden-Rea
- Original, orchestral music that drives the film.
- Jodie Comer and Harry Melling deliver powerhouse performances as delightful weirdos.
- A unique design and aesthetic effectively builds the film’s world.
- The script drags at times, feeling like it’s spinning its wheels as the romance develops.
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