14. Skinamarink, dir. Kyle Edward Ball
Skinamarink is scary as all shit. If it is nothing else (and it is indeed not very much at all), it is terrifying. Skinamarink is one of the most spare, simple, largely plotless horror movies I've ever seen. It is just one singular sensation pounded into you endlessly, expertly, but it is only ever that one thing. You'll know if Skinamarink is for you within only a few minutes. It's either going to be one of the greatest horror nightmares you've ever seen in a movie, or it is going to be an exhausting bore.
What we have is a Creepypasta Movie. Skinamarink is set in 1995, and actually is shot in its director, Kyle Edward Ball's childhood home. Skinamarink was shot on digital cameras but Ball wanted a more VHS-look, so he purposefully filmed it in low light to warp the visual information as much as impossible. And on top of that, Skinamarink has a very intense artificial film grain superimposed over every frame. In many scenes, that digital grain is the only thing you can see. The effect goes beyond just playing with the technical limitations of home video, the movie is bubbling and oozing in entirely unreal ways. It feels like the very film stock is infested with maggots, writhing just under the flesh of the image. It not just "retro so its creepy", it's more. Ball has discovered a whole new concept of making movies that I've never seen before. He has remade his early memories as captured on home video, only the memories are impossible nightmares as captured in a video format that never existed.
The memory Skinamarink wants to exploit for fear is one we all know. Do you remember ever being a small child, still awake late at night, later than you've ever been awake in your short life, surrounded by a thick darkness, feeling protected only by the unearthly glow of a television set the only light in the entire house, while knowing that something is out there waiting for you in the shadows, just beyond the shifting bounds of the light projecting out from the TV set. That sensation is the entirety of Skinamarink. It is about two children, stuck in a house where the night never ends, where all the doors and windows have disappeared, and they dare not ask where their parents are. They sit in the living room, watching cartoons, playing with their toys, while surrounded by the blackness. Ball has this entirely unique filmic language, where he never shoots the movie as POV, but keeps the camera low to the ground, often pointing up at the ceiling or corners. You never see the children's faces, yet their bodies are often in the shot. You're inhabiting their perspective while they are vulnerable in the frame, it's an impressive idea. The children are not safe, and neither are you.
I'm not sure if the adults reading this also wake up in the middle of the night too scared to get out of bed and pee. Do you ever wake up and know something is on your ceiling, or under your desk, or just on the other side of your bedroom door? Or even waiting for you on your way back to bed? I am scared a lot at night in my house when I'm alone, so Skinamarink worked extremely well on me.
I spent much of the 100 minute runtime contorting myself into a pretzel in my theater chair, as if wrapping my limbs in a ball would somehow keep me safe from the overwhelming and unrelenting horror. I realized watching this movie that fear is the emotion closest to physical pain, because I felt so scared that it actually became painful at one point. Other horror movies will eventually relieve the tension with a traditional scare. Skinamarink never lets go. Jump scares are fun moments because immediately after them, you know the gag has happened, and you've jumped, so all the terror has finally found an outlet to express itself. In Skinarmink, there is no outlet. Long shots of empty rooms remain disturbing, even when nothing happens, in fact they're disturbing because so little happens. I felt like I was losing my mind watching this thing.
Meanwhile, other people left the theater after twenty minutes. For them, Skinamarink is just boring, too weird to even be scary. If the central affect does not land, there is not a lot that Skinarmarink will offer. This is a very cheap movie that goes nowhere and is largely without characters. There are not many "gags", only one jump scare (but a good one!). There's more shots of ceilings than there are of humans. The plot never makes any sense. The ghost, or possession, or whatever, follows no rules or logic. We spend long stretches of the movie without any people left at all. At a certain point, the children are hiding even from even us, the audience, so nothing can happen. I'm not sure if the ending is even worth it. Skinamarink has no punchline, no pathos, no explanation, no justification.
The nightmare simply consumes everything, and the movie is over. We're safe now only because the end credits have rolled. Are we safe? Maybe the darkness is still out there, waiting for us tonight, ready to take us away.
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