Skinamarink: Through A Child’s Eyes

I have this vivid memory from when I was very young, like about four years old or so. I was falling asleep, and in a dozing half-asleep/half-awake state I very distinctly saw a hand creep up over the edge of my bed, feel around a little, and then withdraw back under the bed. I did not scream, I did not freak out. I did, however, spend the next several years of my life - like, longer than you’d think - sleeping at the edge of my bed with my arm draped over the side, waiting for the hand to come back so I could catch it. So maybe I am at heart one of those idiots from a mediocre slasher movie who gets offed right away when they go to check out the mysterious noise.

But the point isn’t my foolhardiness in the face of something that should have terrified me, the point is that childhood is fertile ground for nightmares and the nightmarish. At a young enough age, everything is still fairly unfamiliar (and the unfamiliar is scary), the difference between the real and imaginary is more porous than it is in adulthood, and everything is bigger and louder than you. It’s a time when feelings of safety and security are tenuous and nighttime is when the monsters come out. Everything looks scarier, more sinister in the dark.

And this is why Skinamarink works as well as it does. It’s a dense, cryptic, almost impressionistic recreation of what it means to be small and helpless in the dark, where the monsters are. And if you’re receptive to what it’s trying to do, it will get under your skin and stay there.

The film opens with a title card that just says “1995” before diving into a series of static shots of the interior of a house. We hear muffled voices of adults and children, only catching snatches of what they’re saying. It seems like the day is winding down, and we’re able to gather that in this house, Kevin (four years old) and his sister Kaylee live with their mom and dad. It’s bedtime, so Kevin and Kaylee get tucked in. We don’t actually see their parents, and we don’t see much of Kaylee and Kevin either. Everything happens off-camera, accompanied by the same fitful voiceover. Night falls and everything goes dark, until Kevin wakes up in the middle of the night - as little kids sometimes do, to use the bathroom or get some water - to discover the house otherwise empty, lit only by the still-flickering television. It’s just him and Kaylee. His mother is gone, his father is gone.

The front door and all the windows are missing too.

There’s no real story to speak of - it’s the absolute definition of a mood piece. Kevin and Kaylee wander around a house emptied of adults, and you get the sense that at first it’s kind of fun - they can stay up all they want, watch cartoons, play with their toys, but soon enough they can tell something is very wrong, maybe more wrong than they can really appreciate. Everything is experienced from the point of view of small children who have woken up in the middle of the night. This extends to the camerawork, which is very low to the ground. Furniture and doors tower over us, and rooms perfectly normal in the daylight become something far more threatening when it’s just an open door with darkness yawning beyond it.

So what we get is a visual study of a house at night, all odd angles and stark light sources and garish colors and chiaroscuro, all painted on thickly grained, almost pointillist film with veins of scratches and artifacts running through it. The end result is that even the shadows - of which there are numerous long, unblinking shots - feel alive with something seething and tenebrous. You’d almost swear you can glimpse things in it. And sometimes there are. Sound design is expertly deployed, with long stretches of silence interrupted by bangs, clatters, and bursts of white noise, with the occasional bit of diegetic cartoon music for relief, but even that is scratchy and distant. What dialogue we get is very sparse, delivered in whispered voiceover  with the occasional subtitle, often from unnervingly close in the mix as if the person speaking is just behind us. A house at night, to a small child, is a whole other world, and one that isn’t very friendly and everything - the cinematography, the sound, the pacing- captures that very primal fear very well. It’s the fear of what’s in the dark, what’s under the bed, the sounds coming from upstairs. In this context, a simple request like “come down to the basement” becomes laden with dread. It’s not a film you watch as much as it is one you open yourself up to and let carry you wherever it’s going, which is assuredly nowhere good.

It’s a very slow burn, but a very sure one. The almost-glacial pacing means it does sag a little, but not as much as you’d think, instead working as a slow boil that has you thinking it’s just something odd and quirky at first, but goes on to layer and accumulate lots of small details until something slightly strange curdles into something downright malevolent. About thirty minutes in I realized I had to keep unclenching my hands because they kept involuntarily balling into fists, and when the film finally ended, I sagged and sighed with relief because it was over - not because it was bad, but because I finally felt some respite from the constant knot of tension my entire body was coiling into. There’s no real way to anticipate what’s going to happen from moment to moment, and a lot of the shots are the kind that in a more conventional horror movie would be a prelude to a predictable jump scare. Here, you respond to the framing but it just keeps you there, this thrumming of anxiety that won’t go away.  And all of the credits are at the front of the movie instead of the end, so when it ends we’re even sort of denied the relief of that cooldown period while the credits are rolling, that feeling that it’s okay, it’s over now. It just ends, and we have to deal with it, no comfort extended.

Everything about it - the sound, the cinematography, how scenes are staged, the occasional subtitles - conspires to create a feeling of wrongness, like we’re privy to something very private that was never meant to be seen by other people. In this, even though it’s a very different film in a number of ways, it reminds me of Begotten - nothing is explained, there isn’t really a story, visuals are ambiguous and primitive, so like that film it feels like something cursed, something that shouldn’t exist or be capable of being captured on film. We don’t get details, just hints and allusions and vague shapes that nonetheless accumulate into something very unsettling. It’s not for everyone - ironically its simplicity means it requires your full attention and engagement, and if you like watching horror films for adrenaline rushes in a safe, predictable environment, you’re probably going to think this is dumb and boring. But if you can open yourself to its very strange wavelength, it’s one hell of an experience.

IMDB entry
Available on Amazon