Memoir of a Snail Review: Adam Elliot’s 2024 Animated Film Explores Family, Trauma, and Resilience

   October 30, 2024

Family is inseparable. No matter how fractured and disjointed it can be at times, family is who you rely on to get you through the rough patches in life. Adam Elliot‘s 2024 animated movie Memoir of a Snail, in which a young girl Grace experiences nearly every form of trauma and loss imaginable, displays this in perhaps the clearest, most emotional gut punch you’ll see all year. It’s crafted with such a precise thumb on its own pulse in terms of tone and imagery that you’d be hard-pressed to find another director capable colliding this style with this material.

Grace (Sarah Snook) and Pinky (Jacki Weaver) in Memoir of a Snail (2024), directed by Adam Elliot
Grace (Sarah Snook) and Pinky (Jacki Weaver) in Memoir of a Snail (2024)

Because, upon first glance like watching the trailer or Googling a few screenshots, there’s zero chance you’d think Memoir of a Snail was an utterly sincere, effectively emotional drama. It has the style and visual language of a Henry Selick or Charlie Kaufman stop-motion animated picture. Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas [1993], Coraline [2009], Wendell & Wild [2022]) often mines fears and anxieties from being a child and renders them in spooky children’s stories, while Kaufman explores the ambiguous complexities of life and frailty (displayed in his stop-motion feature Anomalisa, 2015). I suppose Memoir of a Snail ties the two idiosyncratic visions together, but does it in a way that is neither cynical or abrasive in ways these previously mentioned movies can be.

The voice acting in Memoir of a Snail is remarkably good considering the age gaps between the characters and their voice actors. Sarah Snook voices the main character, Grace, but I’d be surprised if many viewers would be able to pick her out as the voice of her if they didn’t research it ahead of time. Her soft spoken, empathetic delivery works seamlessly into the story’s dreary material to keep the film’s lighter edge. Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog [2021], Elvis [2022]) plays her twin brother Gilbert, who is separated from Grace following the death of the twins’ father Percy.

Grace’s foster family offers her a place she can call home, with opportunities for freedom, independence, and to explore the hobbies she seems interested in. She collects snails and bonds with her foster mother Pinky (voiced by Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook [2012], Stoker [2013], Bird Box [2018]). She’s given the childhood that many kids in the foster system aren’t able to experience. But it is still not the same because she’s separated from her brother, which Memoir of a Snail explains by mentioning that the two have separate souls, but share one beating heart.

After a while, Grace’s memory of Gilbert begins to fade. She grows closer and closer to her foster mother and develops a relationship from an A+ weirdo named Ken. Gilbert’s life takes a turn in the opposite direction. His foster family is a seedy group of folks with overtly strong religious ties and undisclosed motivations. They manipulate Gilbert for their advantage, and the plotline culminates in his guardians discovering that Gilbert is gay and having an affair with their son. As punishment, Gilbert is locked away for his sins in a religious establishment that eventually catches fire and burns down.

Grace is told of Gilbert’s death, which becomes the most emotionally wrenching moment in the film. Memoir of a Snail is effective emotionally because of big, grand visually striking moments like this that tie together with heartfelt storytelling. I was reminded often of The Wild Robot or Robot Dreams (both animated movies from 2024) because of the decision to link new, inventive animated style with a story of friendship and family bond. It may be an easy alley-oop of a story, but at least Memoir of a Snail finds new avenues in style to make it stand out.

Score: 7/10

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