Skinamarink: Movie Review
Hello, my dearest reader!
I’ve got a movie review for you here today — you may recognize the title, Skinamarink has been making the rounds in horror industry discussions with polarizing opinions. I watched it a while ago, but had so many books I wanted to review, I kinda forgot it for a bit. I kept this review spoiler-free!
The Movie
Skinamarink is a 2022 Canadian experimental horror film written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball as his feature directorial debut. Fun fact: Ball’s 2020 short film, Heck, was developed as a proof of concept for Skinamarink.
Shot entirely in ball’s childhood home in Edmonton, Canada, Skinamarink premiered at the 26th Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal on July 25th, 2022.
The film stars Lucas Paul and Dali Rose Tetreault as two young kids who wake up and find their world completely changed:
Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows & blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party. They play well worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while it becomes clear that something is watching over them. — Skinamarink website
The Review
Skinamarink missed the mark for me. Running at 100 minutes, it felt way longer, and I often felt my attention wandering during the excessive amount of ceiling shots.
A lot of reviews and friends have discussed how they found it to be an effective experimental film that recreated a childhood “fear of the dark” with its liminal spaces and deliberate vagueness that allowed the audience to make whatever connections they wanted to. For me, it was ineffective.
The ending is also left vague, I’ve looked up a lot of interpretations — feel free to do so as well, I won’t include any spoilers here.
To me, it was just dull. Lots of reviews call it “elevated” and “terrifying”, I guess I just don’t see it. Maybe it it had been edited to be shorter and tighter? It just dragged for me. I watched it because of all the hype and then afterwards was just…glad it was over so I could go do something else.
Obviously the film being at child height, never showing the kids’ faces, subdued audio (for the most part), the dark setting, and prolonged silent shots were supposed to evoke something more. There were a few jumps cares that felt out of place and just grating. And again — a lot of scenes of just the ceiling.
That said, I guess maybe I wouldn’t say you shouldn’t watch it? It’s obviously a very derisive film so you might end up loving it!
0/10
x PLM
