Skinamarink

1
first i've heard of this, and it seems like a goddamn nightmare.


With his feature debut, SKINAMARINK, director Kyle Edward Ball plunges us into those endless childhood nights in his expressionistic and experimental horror vision. Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all windows and doors in their home have vanished. While they decide to wait for the grown-ups to return, they realize they’re not alone, and a voice that sounds like a child beckons them.

Do you remember waking up in the middle of the night as a child and hearing the crackling white noise of an old TV set? In SKINAMARINK, those memories become the backdrops of terrible imaginings and the landscape of increasingly disturbing incidents. While experimental in structure and aesthetics, Ball’s film never loses touch with its child protagonists. Their voices, distant—as if they were wading through water, ripple through the dark, textured space. Their perspective shapes the strange otherworldliness of the suburban home, collapsing time and space, as their vantage point reshapes the familiar into something frightening, as the house seems to shapeshift as the night deepens and the nightmare grows. The uniquely minimalist approach keeps most of the characters off-screen, their voices and sound carrying much of the action. The effect of focusing on the mundane, on ceiling lamps, doorways, and hallways, captures a deep sense of the uncanny as the ordinary becomes increasingly horrific. While by no means a traditional horror film, SKINAMARINK has a way of weaseling under your skin and bringing you back to the greatest fears of childhood.
excited to see this.

Re: Skinamarink

2
This movie is fucking terrible. Film a dark or dimly-lit corner of your room with your phone where the walls meet the ceiling for 90 minutes and watch it back - guaranteed more interesting than this. What a waste of time. Annoying as hell to watch due to the “retro” (aka, we’re going to fuck up the rest of the film because most of the scenes were so dimly lit that they look like shit) look and the framing construct, which was only ever at 7’ or 2’, and usually tilted (imagine your significant other’s friend making you both sit down and watch a slideshow of “a super cool Air B&B house we rented” where all the pictures were taken by their 3-year old at night, on a disposable camera, and it lasts 90 minutes). Don’t think we ever clearly see any faces. We see some backs of heads and some jump scare attempts with sort-of faces, or you’re focusing so hard on the screen trying to decide what you’re looking at that maybe it’s a face? Almost all dialog is whispered, and what other spoken dialog - like the father’s phone call at the beginning - has nothing to do with anything. Or maybe Kevin fell down the stairs so fucking hard he died and the rest of the film is his purgatory? But nothing changed from before that phone call to after. Whatever, I’m not spending another brain wave thinking about this pile of shit. Do not watch.