1 out of 5

Directed by: Kyle Edward Bell

It has seemed – excepting those who inevitably reject Skinamarink outright and need to do so with some pretty direct language – that reviews for the movie have largely fallen into two camps: those for whom it works, and those for whom it doesn’t, but respect the concept.

I’m in that latter camp, and doubt I’ll be able to offer any sparkling criticisms that differentiate my dislike from others, except that it appears on this site.

Skinamarink is experimental horror. It is reliant, I’d say, on immersion, and I’ll admit that watching this in an empty apartment, late at night, had me curiously looking over at shadowed corners, or questioning odd bumps and groans of the house, but it never crossed the line into being effective, and that’s what really knocked it down for me – every potentially good aspect very much had its negatives.

Skinamarink opens with an oddly perspectived, visually and aurally muffled view of… an adult and child talking? Occasionally, a child’s voice will call for their dad. It is a nighttime shot, VHS fidelity, and dialogue floats in and out of clarity. This is the approach for the entire 100 minutes – kind of just extending a creepyimages subreddit or something, which perhaps harkens back to the roots of this as a youtube short.

There is a full narrative on wikipedia, but all we can really tell as things go on: dad leaves at some point, and there are two young children alone in the house. They wake, and spend their time watching old cartoons, while strange things occur around them – doors disappear; toys stick to walls; voices call from the darkness. These elements sound potentially spooky in description, and scary movies have been hung on less, but recall the above-mentioned presentation: Skinamarink is presented indirectly, with a generally steady or barely moving camera stuck at an odd angle, the screen cast in dark static, characters rarely on screen, and dialogue either indiscernible or subtitled. It is wholly dedicated to representing those moments where you wake in the middle of the night, and wait for your eyes to adjust to funny shapes, hoping that odd sound isn’t someone creeping around beyond your field of vision…

It sounds great, but it’s also an inherently limited concept if, like, you’re intent on not adding any surface level narrative or characterization to things. Which are artistic choices in this case. But beyond not feeling like the concept supports a full film, these artistic choices I feel actively harmed the film.

First and foremost would be the visuals. While Paranormal Activity had proven the chilling effect of keeping a camera static on a darkened image, leaving our vision scrawling over the frame and prepping for a jump scare, Bell’s near abstraction of visuals removes context, and this removes the creepiness. Though the low camera angles evoke a child’s POV, and the partial obscurement of the frame (often our vision is locked very low or high, or blocked by objects) mixes the feeling of peeking from ‘neath covers with an otherworldly one, I’d often just find myself asking: why are we staring at this corner for five minutes? And it’s rather unmotivated besides – not quite first person, but not even observational. A scene where someone looks under a bed features the PoV drifting from bed, off to the side; bed and off to side, and it’s so constructed for the scare – there’s no reason for that periodic side look – that it goes against the found footage vibe of the thing. Then, very practically, by cropping actors out of the frame, when things move around or a scary voice is heard, well, why couldn’t it be the kid? I’m the wrong viewer in this sense, I suppose, but I also feel we’re just not “cued” enough, and are supposed to assume all things have a creepy source because it’s a creepy movie with creepy shots.

Regarding that scary voice – the sound design in this killed me. Some of it is subtitles, and then I watched with closed captions on Shudder; and without that secondary support, would I have understood any of the non-subbed dialogue? Would I have registered “bones crunching” or other ambience as anything more Than noise? The foley work either sounded indistinguishable, or almost cartoonishly fake; both, again, taking me right out of the movie.

There are some bonus flubs. For something so organic and diegetic, I don’t know why non-diegetic music stings were used, and similarly, the jump scares are of the cheapest variety; just poor attempts at being loud when it’s been very quiet otherwise. And yes, this was a micro-budget, but the way some things were visualized seemed unnecessarily cheap. It’s a weird mix of being confident enough to pursue a vision, but then having blind spots for some things which I felt undermined the movie big time.

And now, backhandedly, I’ll say that I do think it’s cool this was made, and that it got the attention it did. I have to circle around to acknowledging that some people really dug this, which speaks to all of the affects that broke the movie for me seemingly tapping into the right veins for them. I suppose that makes this whole reviewing shtick especially subjective… but I think the difference here is that Bell was not aiming for a genre with rules with Skinamarink , but was instead working within a horror format to go completely their own way. I did not enjoy this outing, but I trust their instincts – I’d be willing to follow along on the next journey.