Skinamarink (2023) - Movie Review

A while back, I reviewed David Lowery’s A Ghost Story. It was an odd one to sort out my opinion for, as there was a clear artistic vision to it, one that was ideal for the story being told, and it showed real creativity in unexpected ways. And yet I didn’t like it. For as much credit as I could give it as one of the more daring films I saw that year, that wasn’t enough to cover up how much it bored me silly. If nothing else, I’d at least point to my write-up for it as proof that I am fair with the films I review, even if I didn’t enjoy them personally.

I find myself in a similar position when looking at this film, which went viral late last year and finally made it onto streaming near the start of this one. It is emphatically unlike any other horror film I’ve ever watched before, and likely to stand out from any of them that I watch after. Like A Ghost Story, there is a clear artistic vision here, and a story that suits it perfectly, and it twists cinematic conventions in interesting ways. Also like A Ghost Story, I still struggled to stay engaged for its entirety in spite of all that.

But let’s go with the positives first.

Not since Sungazer (warning: your eyes may grow to resent you for watching) have I watched something this infested with film grain. Like, it looks like it was filmed with a phone camera from several generations back without adequate lighting. The camera angles are odd too. They’re positioned as low to the ground as possible, and often angled towards the ceiling of the house that the story takes place in. The two combined result in this Backrooms analog-horror liminal-space curio that looks like something that would wind up on YouTube. Fitting, given that writer/director/editor Kyle Edward Ball started out there with a channel dedicated to pooling fan contributions of nightmares they’d experienced, and then mocking up film versions of them.

However, it also makes sense considering who the main characters are: A four-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister. Due to supernatural circumstances, they end up in their house alone, without their parents, and things start disappearing. Toys. Toilets. Doors. Windows. One after another, they just vanish. As part of the story being told, the visuals have the effect of emulating what it’s like to be in a house that was made for people way taller than you are; i.e. a child's perspective. As for the film grain, it gives the prominent shadows this organic sensation, like they’re a singular sentient mass constantly rippling and shifting as they absorbs everything they touch.

This is added to by what ends up being the primary light source: A CRT junk-in-the-trunk TV playing old-timey cartoons. It reminded me of my own childhood, when I’d make nocturnal excursions into the living room to watch movies and play Xbox while my mum was still asleep, not to mention a weirdly specific nightmare involving a blackened room lit up solely by a TV (playing Big Wolf On Campus, for reasons I’ve never been able to discern). The imagery invokes a retreat into the stability of childhood routine, where television and playing with LEGO create a comforting structure to offset the scary things going on. If I were feeling particularly saucy, I’d describe this as the most terrifying littling session ever.    

As an aesthetic, it’s rock-solid and rather unique as far as trying to return the audience to a time when they were small, defenceless, and relying on adults to protect them from the monsters. But even at an hour and forty minutes, the approach to an unsettling slow burn ends up being too slow. It can get legitimately horrifying once the mysterious voices chime in, but beyond the experience of regression, there’s really not that much to this film as a story. It runs into the same problem as films like Slender Man or the Five Nights At Freddy’s adaptation, where it presumes that having a decent creepypasta is enough to justify a full feature.

There’s also how, for a production that leans this heavily into experimentation, it ends up relying on jump scares. And they’re the loud, bright, generally annoying kind of jump scares that would be disappointing to see in any modern film. Let alone one that has legitimate uniqueness to it despite that, and is capable of more genuine terror with quiet than with obnoxious blaring.

Given that this managed to make back its $15,000 budget over a hundred-fold, and it still is a rare beast in modern horror, I’ll admit that I have a certain respect for this film. It shows a willingness to look at familiar stories from different angles (often literally in this case), and I’m certainly curious to see where Kyle Edward Ball goes from here. But I can’t see myself returning to this any time soon, as its ability as an immersive mood piece is let down by the nebulous story, laborious pacing, and occasional blasts of mainstream cliché. I still think it’s alright, but with how much it has going for it, I wish I enjoyed it way more than I do.