Film Review: Skinamarink (2022)
(this review is spoiler-free.)
There are a handful of instances in my history with horror where I was able to recognize that I was seeing a film which would leave its fingerprints on the genre for years to come. The clearest of these was the original Paranormal Activity (2007), where I heard a packed theater alternatively shriek in terror and grow so silent you could hear the anxious breath of the person at the end of the row. Another was The Blair Witch Project (1999) which I think brought arguments to every small town in America as to whether or not it was, in fact, composed of real footage. Before my time, there was Psycho (1960), The Exorcist (1973), and Cannibal Holocaust (1980) that redefined what horror could be, and history has shown us that these audience instincts hold true as time passes.
These films aren’t surefire fixtures in the constellation of horror; they aren’t guaranteed critical success or six-figure ticket sales in their opening run. Hell, they may not even be particularly enjoyable, but they do remain in the minds of audience members far longer than many films which are better regarded.
None of us who held on until the lights came up are going to forget Skinamarink, but neither will those who walked out of the theater. This is one of those films that people are going to talk about, to reference in wider conversations, to stream five years from now just to remember how affecting it was. For me, Skinamarink goes immediately into that class of film where legacy far outpaces box office, RT scores, and the hyperbole of any detractors.
The film has grabbed a lot of headlines for its $15,000 budget, Youtube proof-of-concept, and distinct degree of divisiveness among audiences, but what excites me is how unique it is: here is a debut creator doing something more or less completely original and hitting his shot.
In This House
Skinamarink starts out chronicling the mundane ambiance of an evening in a small home. The year is 1995, and two young siblings, Kaylee and Kevin, discover that they cannot find their parents, and that the windows and doors in their home are blinking in and out of existence. Early on, we see bits and pieces of the house and hear a man we can presume is the children’s father explaining over the phone about how Kevin fell down the stairs after a presumed sleepwalking incident.
There’s also something else in the house: a malicious entity that in time will seek to manipulate and isolate the members of the household. Through the course of the night, viewers will follow Kaylee and Kevin as they become aware of the unseen force and subsequently try to repel or evade it.
Kaylee, You Have to Come See This
The opening stretch of the film is uniquely brilliant: we get a layered cacophony of sound as television programs, closing doors, buzzing lights, clattering toys, and distant conversations pile upon each other as the camera cuts from location to location in the two-story home. Though the audience likely doesn’t realize it, they’re being primed on the acoustics of the household, unconsciously learning how sound travels unnaturally and eerily through the space before anything strange begins to happen. Later, this will subtly help viewers pick out when something is out of place, or when the entity is present. It takes a tremendous amount of effort and intent to construct something like this in a film, but the effect is superb as the audience moves from anticipation into anxiety.
The visuals of the film are equally important and intentional for creating dread, as the vast majority of scenes feature a fixed camera pointed toward the periphery, typically at the ceiling or into a corner as we hear sounds and follow shadows in order to piece the events of the scene together. It sounds a bit disorienting, but the end result is to force the audience to imagine most of what is happening, and it’s terribly effective once you grow accustomed to it. The cumulative effect of the visual and sound design is deeply unnerving, and this may be the foremost contributor to how scary this film ultimately comes across.
I Hurt My Eye (and I feel sick)
Director Kyle Ball also makes a remarkable use of shadows and the imagination, often letting his camera linger on darkened hallways and corners of the room for extended periods, allowing the on-edge viewer to imagine that they’re seeing subtle things in the liminal space between certain and unknown. This is used to fantastic effect in the middle stretch of the film where there are frequently elongated, black spaces in the shots, typically in corners, behind characters, or on the other side of doorways. As an audience member, this provokes the human brain to scrutinize the space and will something to appear even if we don’t actually see it.
The overt scares in Skinamarink give me pause, as they’re typically blunt-force affairs where the camera locks on an object or space before blasting the viewer with an ear-piercing screech that hard-cuts to a new scene. It’s certainly effective, but doesn’t always feel fair, and while these sequences are memorable, they aren’t the most affecting.
By far the best moments are when the strangeness in the house builds to a crescendo, and we see the haunting presence take an action or exert influence over an individual. These are grisly, unsettling setpieces permeated by a miserable dread, and they simply eclipse the more overt moments of terror in the movie. I like to give Ball the benefit of the doubt here, and believe he’s simply demonstrating that he can do either effectively, thus keeping the audience from getting too callused. God knows we’ve all seen horror films that use a single tool to bludgeon the audience into boredom.
The entity itself is tremendously effective, with its voice equal parts masculine and feminine, its personality a seesaw of malicious and playful. A regrettable element here as it affects the film, is that sometimes the creature isn’t subtitled and it can be difficult to make out precisely what it’s saying. Fortunately, I was able to see the film more than once and this helped to assuage this aspect.
572 Days?
The only significant criticism I can level at Skinamarink is a struggle with pacing in its latter half, after a particular basement scene. By this point we’re down to a single character, and the film plays with the things in its toolbox a bit too much as the dark entity repeats actions and spends a bit too long passing time in uninteresting ways. This is after a few really heavy scenes and our appetites are whetted, but then the film just slows down a bit too much to capitalize on what it has built. A mere ten minutes off the runtime might have mitigated this, but I’m sure it’s something Ball will be more aware of in his next time out, whether he elects to curb these instincts or not.
Final Thoughts
Skinamarink is ripe for further filmmaking exposition–I took copious notes on the role of electronics, the layering of auditory effects and their use as cinematic triggers, the nods to 20th-century moral panics as they relate to this film, but none of these ultimately had a place in this review. My wife and I spent hours discussing the role of the parents, the inroad of the entity to the home, the meaning of the final sequences. The longer we debated, the more obvious it was that we could go on doing so inevitably. This is a telltale sign of great filmmaking.
The great ask of Skinamarink is its demands for attention. In my reviews on Vogue Horror, I’ve long hovered at the border of being an insufferable hand-wringer about how the short attention spans of the modern audience are ruining both horror and fiction more broadly. Skinamarink only works if you lock in early, and with good faith, to trust that the creator is going to take you somewhere remarkable by the darkest road available. If you’re a moviegoer who can forget about your phone and stay alert throughout, more or less steadfast in the belief that every shot holds something worthwhile, this may well be the best film you’ve absorbed in a very long time.
Skinamarink is a triumph of cinematic intent, and an unshakably brilliant exploration of childhood fear and isolation. Both the camerawork and the sound design add a layer of sensory engagement that takes the film to another level and make it a unique piece of filmcraft that, regardless of whether or not you ultimately like it, succeeds.
Verdict: 8/10
Strengths:
Deeply terrifying, particularly if you watch alone in a dark room. This is genuinely the scariest movie to come out in years
Wonderfully crafted with each element being acutely intentional
Does something we haven’t seen outside of experimental film, and does it expertly and effectively
Weaknesses:
A few missteps in pacing, particularly in the latter half of the film
Shows enough to leave me wanting the revelation of another layer
You may also like: Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, The St. Francisville Experiment, The Outwaters
