Horror Film Skinamarink Review: It doesn’t feel like a failure as much as it feels like Skinamarink achieved its goal of being both boring and hair-raising. Skinamarink is an experimental horror film that forgoes traditional storytelling in an effort to re-create the feeling of being scared — more specifically, the feeling of being scared when you’re a child and the night has transformed your bedroom into something alien and the hallway between you and the bathroom into a no-land man’s full of monsters.
Even the most feverishly worked-up young mind finally gives in to sleep, as seen in scenes where the camera frequently tilts upward to simulate the perspective of a child in bed peering at the shadowy nooks where the ceiling and wall meet. This dread laced with nostalgia is infused with banality.
When 6-year-old Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) and 4-year-old Kevin (Lucas Paul) awaken to find their father went and their home’s windows and doors slowly disappearing, they make a nest of blankets and toys in front of the television and watch cartoons—a Saturday morning ritual that includes cereal that is carried out in a paranormal stasis.
Kaylee is lured upstairs to her parent’s room by an ominous voice in an astonishing, peer-out-from-between-your-fingers scene that Skinamarink accomplishes when it intentionally sets out to frighten. However, the movie’s concept intrigues me more than the experience of watching it as a whole.
Over the course of the movie, all those prolonged, evocative views of the grainy blackness beyond unlocked doors and the flickering TV light from the back of the couch lose their power. The fact that Skinamarink deals in horror ideas that were developed on, or at least were heavily influenced by, the internet makes it more intriguing.
Ball, who has been compared to David Lynch, began by creating YouTube videos that were inspired by the dreams of users. Eraserhead may come to mind while listening to the rich soundscapes and squishy dream logic of Skinamarink, but We’re All Going to the World’s Fair from last year is a closer relative.
Skinamarink’s concepts of what is unsettling, like the coagulation of childhood memories and hollowing out of everyday settings, feel inspired by the teeming universe of online horror that sprawls across sub-Reddits and video platforms, much like Jane Schoenbrun’s film, which revolves around a haunting social-media challenge.
The majority of Schoenbrun’s film takes place in the young lead’s home as well, but when it does venture outdoors, it never depicts a single human being in its scenes of big-box stores and multilane highways. Similar to this, Skinamarink positions its few human characters—when it displays them—in the corners of the frame and shoots them from behind or in pieces.
The house itself, a busy home that has been transformed into a creepy limbo, is the point. This film most strongly evokes the liminal-spaces aesthetic that first appeared on message boards like 4Chan and Reddit a few years ago and has since spread throughout the rest of the internet with those unhurried shots of the upstairs hallway, the rugged Lego landscapes across a section of carpet, and a dining room chair that is mysteriously attached to the ceiling.
Skinamarink clearly draws inspiration from user-generated photographs of deserted public and transitional spaces, dimly lit classrooms at night, seemingly endless corridors of fluorescent light, and deserted parking lots, to the extent that Ball has referred to the internet as his “co-director.”
Because they aren’t overgrown and rotting, these desolate areas are enticingly post-apocalyptic. They give the impression that everyone has been raptured or that you have entered a backstage area of reality by sneaking through a portal between worlds.
This affection has been returned by the internet, which used the trailer for Skinamarink to become a minor viral hit (as well as pirated copies circulated after a streaming-festival mishap).
It’s appropriate that Skinamarink is released just after Blumhouse’s M3gan, which likewise gained popularity online before becoming a box office success in cinemas and also expertly catered to the same crowd that memed it into the broader cultural consciousness.
Horror, with its shaky relationship to the Internet world, has been the one non-superhero genre to consistently draw audiences to cinemas, despite worries that the future of movies may be undermined by competition with digital entertainment.
Also Check:
- House Republicans Create Cryptocurrency Subcommittee To Oversee A New Crypto Industry!
- There Are Calls For Rep George Santos To Resign Due To Campaign Lying!
Skinamarink is very different from M3gan in many aspects, including its deliberate pacing, lack of a plot, and absence of both stars and images of the performers’ faces.
In spite of its 1995 setting and numerous analog-style flourishes, such as the grain effects and the landline that are crucial to the story’s conclusion, Skinamarink is firmly rooted in the digital era.
It serves as an illustration of how someone who grew up surrounded by the internet’s expansive, crowdsourced horror sensibilities can sharpen those sensibilities and produce art that is neither “elevated horror” nor mainstream, but rather something unique.
Image Source: variety
Who’s In The Skinamarink Cast?
With only four actors, the cast for this movie is extremely small. Kevin, age 4, is portrayed by Lucas Paul, while Kaylee, age 6, is portrayed by Dali Rose Tetreault. Both of these young performers are making their feature picture debuts.
Ross Paul, the real-life father of Lucas Paul, who plays their father, appeared in the 2011 television series Moby Dick and produced and directed Ashley’s Rejects: Shameless, a 2017 music video. Jaime Hill, who plays the mother, is another up-and-coming actor who has roles in Give and Takes Hot Box, and I’m Haunted.
Despite the lack of an IMDb profile, it should be noted that the home itself might qualify as a character in and of itself. The film was shot in Kyle Edward Ball’s childhood home in Canada, as was previously mentioned.
Jamie McRae‘s inventive (and unsettling) cinematography allows for a seamless transition between the house’s observations and the children’s experiences, making the house appear to have omniscience.
Where To Watch?
Later this year, Skinamarink will be made available on the horror streaming service Shudder in addition to being released in theaters worldwide. “Skinamarink is a slow, horrific trek through a vivid experience of reminiscence, reminding grownups what it felt like to be terrified of the dark, even in the comfort of one’s own house,” said renowned film reviewer C.H. Newell.
This horror film is a compilation of recurring nightmares from when you were a kid when absurd things made sense and the nighttime darkness was a living entity that was always prepared to hunt.
The photography and camera angle perfectly capture how the young characters’ perceptions of the world were warped and how strange the home’s hallways and corridors felt to them.
Similarly, we can now see individuals looking for Horror Film Skinamarink Review. Please share this with your friends if you find it interesting. Visit journalistjunction.com for more celebrity updates and breaking news.
