Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
After watching this last night, I wasn't sure what I had just seen. As an experimental film, Skinamarink pushes the envelop of horror and suspenseful filmmaking into new territory. The whole film seems like a nightmare from the perspective of two little kids in a house all alone at night. Well, I say alone, but you'll see. Be patient with this one. It sort of works its way under your skin.
"Skinamarink is a 2022 Canadian experimental art supernatural psychological horror[1] film written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature-length directorial debut.[2] The film follows a young brother and sister who wake up during the night to discover that they cannot find their father and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are disappearing....
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 133 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads, "Skinamarink can be more confounding than frightening, but for viewers able or willing to dial into its unique wavelength, this unsettling film will be difficult to shake."[32] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 25 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[33]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote, "I found Skinamarink terrifying, but it's a film that asks for (and rewards) patience, and can therefore invite revolt [...] Yet if you go with it, you may feel that you've touched the uncanny."[10] Michael Gingold from Rue Morgue praised the film's shot compositions and sound design, writing that it "takes you back to being a little kid lying in bed in the middle of the night, listening to strange noises coming from elsewhere in the house and wondering what their frightful sources might be."[11] He added that the film often opts to neither show nor tell, "but it pays off to the point where that offscreen voice's simple request to 'Look under the bed' has you tingling with anticipation, and a simple sound effect can get you shivering."[11] Dread Central's Josh Korngut awarded Skinamarink a score of three-and-a-half out of five stars, calling it "a deeply unsettling exploration of death, childhood, and the house you grew up in", and concluding: "For those seeking a traditional horror movie experience, turn back now. And I say so without judgment. [...] Filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball demands the audience pick up the shovel and do the digging on their own. It's not fair, but it is an exciting and original vision of what horror can look like."[34]
Matt Donato of /Film commended the film for its atmosphere, which he felt was derived from a familiarity with childhood experiences of fear, though he also criticized its runtime as overlong.[18] He called it "exquisitely divisive — the kind of film that will balance zero and five-star reviews. That said, those seeking an abstract exploration of lights-out anxieties by lo-fi means should seek this shot-on-film-lookin' curiosity that abides by no conventional filmmaking rules."[18] Matthew Jackson of The A.V. Club gave the film a grade of "A", writing that, "If you're willing to follow Ball and company down these dark corridors, into this twisted view of primal childhood fear and how easily we get lost in that fear, you're in for an absolutely unforgettable horror experience."[35] Rolling Stone's K. Austin Collins characterized Skinamarink as featuring a "quiet cadence of cutting, oddly mundane, wait-and-see terror," and concluded that the film is "quiet horror at its finest. Skinamarink isn't scary because of what it depicts. It's scary because it already knows that our imagination will do half of the work."[5] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "a difficult film to review", and "an experiment in form and storytelling, pushing viewers to stop interpreting it and experience it instead."[36]
Rachel Ho of Exclaim! compared the narrative structure of Skinamarink to that of a dream, and wrote that it elicits fear through "a familiar dread that paints the entire film" rather than a conventional storyline.[9] She added that it "taps into our childhood nightmares, when the nonsensical made sense and the dark was a living, breathing organism to be feared", and wrote, "It's been awhile since I've been this scared while watching a movie, and it's not even because of jump scares or the boogeyman. It's the disarming and unsettling feeling Ball creates, and the anxiety that he builds that never quite dissipates."[9] Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the film "accomplished but seemingly unfinished—indeed, hardly begun", lamenting it as having "no referent world, no identifiable background, for [its images and sounds] to symbolize or suggest."[37] Richard Whittaker of The Austin Chronicle wrote that its 100-minute length "gives Ball more time to create subtle thematic vibrations, build up dreamlike symbolism and resonances through recurrent images [...] Yet it's also an eye-straining act of endurance [...] The pat defense is that Skinamarink is not for conventional horror audiences, and that's obvious, but at the same time it feels overextended as a conceptual piece."[38] Slant Magazine's Chuck Bowen felt that the film's "spell is broken by its sheer, ungodly slowness, which springs from a paucity of ideas. There's simply not much going on here. And with one's mind permitted to roam for vast stretches, there's time to consider Ball's borrowings."[39] Seeing the works of Robert Bresson as one such influence, Bowen wrote: "Ball's innovation is to present such enjoyable hokum with a kind of Bressonian anti-naturalism, turning the proceedings austere and humorless. [...] What this monotonous formalist exercise doesn't have, though, is Bresson's sense of how minute details reveal unexpected dimensions of a person's soul."[39]---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinamarink
"Skinamarink is a 2022 Canadian experimental art supernatural psychological horror[1] film written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature-length directorial debut.[2] The film follows a young brother and sister who wake up during the night to discover that they cannot find their father and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are disappearing....
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 133 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads, "Skinamarink can be more confounding than frightening, but for viewers able or willing to dial into its unique wavelength, this unsettling film will be difficult to shake."[32] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 25 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[33]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote, "I found Skinamarink terrifying, but it's a film that asks for (and rewards) patience, and can therefore invite revolt [...] Yet if you go with it, you may feel that you've touched the uncanny."[10] Michael Gingold from Rue Morgue praised the film's shot compositions and sound design, writing that it "takes you back to being a little kid lying in bed in the middle of the night, listening to strange noises coming from elsewhere in the house and wondering what their frightful sources might be."[11] He added that the film often opts to neither show nor tell, "but it pays off to the point where that offscreen voice's simple request to 'Look under the bed' has you tingling with anticipation, and a simple sound effect can get you shivering."[11] Dread Central's Josh Korngut awarded Skinamarink a score of three-and-a-half out of five stars, calling it "a deeply unsettling exploration of death, childhood, and the house you grew up in", and concluding: "For those seeking a traditional horror movie experience, turn back now. And I say so without judgment. [...] Filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball demands the audience pick up the shovel and do the digging on their own. It's not fair, but it is an exciting and original vision of what horror can look like."[34]
Matt Donato of /Film commended the film for its atmosphere, which he felt was derived from a familiarity with childhood experiences of fear, though he also criticized its runtime as overlong.[18] He called it "exquisitely divisive — the kind of film that will balance zero and five-star reviews. That said, those seeking an abstract exploration of lights-out anxieties by lo-fi means should seek this shot-on-film-lookin' curiosity that abides by no conventional filmmaking rules."[18] Matthew Jackson of The A.V. Club gave the film a grade of "A", writing that, "If you're willing to follow Ball and company down these dark corridors, into this twisted view of primal childhood fear and how easily we get lost in that fear, you're in for an absolutely unforgettable horror experience."[35] Rolling Stone's K. Austin Collins characterized Skinamarink as featuring a "quiet cadence of cutting, oddly mundane, wait-and-see terror," and concluded that the film is "quiet horror at its finest. Skinamarink isn't scary because of what it depicts. It's scary because it already knows that our imagination will do half of the work."[5] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "a difficult film to review", and "an experiment in form and storytelling, pushing viewers to stop interpreting it and experience it instead."[36]
Rachel Ho of Exclaim! compared the narrative structure of Skinamarink to that of a dream, and wrote that it elicits fear through "a familiar dread that paints the entire film" rather than a conventional storyline.[9] She added that it "taps into our childhood nightmares, when the nonsensical made sense and the dark was a living, breathing organism to be feared", and wrote, "It's been awhile since I've been this scared while watching a movie, and it's not even because of jump scares or the boogeyman. It's the disarming and unsettling feeling Ball creates, and the anxiety that he builds that never quite dissipates."[9] Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the film "accomplished but seemingly unfinished—indeed, hardly begun", lamenting it as having "no referent world, no identifiable background, for [its images and sounds] to symbolize or suggest."[37] Richard Whittaker of The Austin Chronicle wrote that its 100-minute length "gives Ball more time to create subtle thematic vibrations, build up dreamlike symbolism and resonances through recurrent images [...] Yet it's also an eye-straining act of endurance [...] The pat defense is that Skinamarink is not for conventional horror audiences, and that's obvious, but at the same time it feels overextended as a conceptual piece."[38] Slant Magazine's Chuck Bowen felt that the film's "spell is broken by its sheer, ungodly slowness, which springs from a paucity of ideas. There's simply not much going on here. And with one's mind permitted to roam for vast stretches, there's time to consider Ball's borrowings."[39] Seeing the works of Robert Bresson as one such influence, Bowen wrote: "Ball's innovation is to present such enjoyable hokum with a kind of Bressonian anti-naturalism, turning the proceedings austere and humorless. [...] What this monotonous formalist exercise doesn't have, though, is Bresson's sense of how minute details reveal unexpected dimensions of a person's soul."[39]---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinamarink
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