Skinamarink (2022) Movie Review
Skinamarink (2022) Movie Review
As soon as I could truly put my imagination to the test as a young kid, I was always captivated by what my mind could conjure up, the complex yet just-out-of-reach worlds that I could create inside of my own head. If reality was the front of the mirror, my imagination’s constructions were just behind the glass. I don’t think I’m unique in the experiences I’m describing. Even though I “knew” that when I let my imagination run wild it was all in my head, the distinction was not always crystal clear to me. Even though most of what I’m talking about were hazy daydreams inspired both by the suburban environment around me and the media I was consuming at the time, I also had extremely vivid nightmares in which I would be terrorized by various demented figures. I remember one of them was a witch with green skin and one was a creepy old woman. I wouldn’t be battling them in some far-away dreamland; they appeared to me in my own bedroom, coming out of the unknown depths of the dark, the depths that suddenly existed when all the lights were turned off. Obviously I was not actually being harmed by any sort of real-life threat, and these nightmares did not last much longer than a few odd on-and-off periods in my early elementary school years (if I had to guess), but in the moment it was sometimes hard for me to tell where the line between the nightmares and the reality was actually drawn. Like I said earlier, I think this experience is one that many others probably had something similar to. As a kid, the scariness of things is amplified by your lack of mature understanding of their harmlessness, and so everything inevitably becomes nightmare fuel. When I saw the trailer for Skinamarink, a lo-fi indie horror sensation, I saw that a horror movie had finally tapped into that exact feeling you have as a kid in the dark. In fact, this might have been the horror movie I had been waiting for this entire time, and I hadn’t even known it. People often describe horror films as “scary because they feel real” or “scary because they could be real,” but here is a film that is the exact epitome of that. I have literally never seen a horror movie capture the experience of being alone (or ~not alone~) in the dark as a child, trapped and helpless, more perfectly than Skinamarink.
In terms of actual plot, there barely is any. There are two children, a father, and a mother in a house. After not too long, the father and the mother disappear, as well as all the windows and doors of the house. All of the lights are turned off, and the two kids are trapped alone in the darkness as a voice from the shadows talks to them. I don’t wanna spoil too much of this film, but about 99% of it is simply an exercise in seeing how much tension it can possibly build up, and about 1% of it is a handful of high-decibel jump scares. This may sound like an annoying movie to watch, and for some people, it absolutely will be. Either this movie will click with you and you will feel genuinely creeped out, or you’ll be bored to tears, annoyed that you’re spending an hour and forty minutes of your time essentially looking at grainy shots of walls and stairs. Personally, as someone who could “relate” to the exact type of fear put on display in the film, I found Skinamarink to be truly creepy. I’d be lying if I said it completely held up the suspense throughout its entire runtime. There were definitely long stretches of time when the tension started to break due to lack of payoff, and I’d feel like I was let off the hook. But then a few minutes later, it would start to build up again. This is absolutely a movie that “plays” with its audience, using very specific imagery to creep out the viewers. Some of the imagery is sort of hit-or-miss; for example, probably at least a good third of the film is spent on shots of old cartoons playing on the TV set, and almost none of this landed where I think the director might’ve wanted it to. This film was apparently made for $15,000, and while that is certainly an impressive budget to work with and then make a hit movie out of, sometimes I wondered where even that money was spent. Sure, there are some practical effects, but I can only assume that money went toward paying the crew and paying for marketing. This is a divisive film. Bottom line, if you hate slow movies, then you’ll probably flat-out dislike Skinamarink. If you’re someone who feels interested in the idea of a slow-burn, extremely lo-fi film that isn’t like anything you’ve seen in any sort of mainstream horror before, this could definitely appeal to you. This has far more in common with the “analog horror” you would find on YouTube than any sort of theatrical-release studio horror film, and personally, I’m really glad I went to see it. If I had to give it a grade, I’d say B+, but for sheer effort and effectiveness for me personally, maybe an A-. It’s not often I would say that a horror movie genuinely personally resonates with me, but Skinamarink is a film that claws the depths of the unconscious in a way that feels slightly invasive. At least, that was my experience with it. Someone else might fall asleep after the first ten minutes.
