SKINAMARINK - A Review

Lucas Paul as Kevin in a deceptively clear image from Skinamarink

Rating: ⭐⭐ 1/2

It's safe to say that Kyle Edward Ball's lo-fi, high-concept feature debut is unnerving. We can disagree on what else it is, but it will get under your skin one way or another. Because Skinamarink is, above all else, patient. And it demands patience of its audience. It is divisive by nature, succeeding or failing based on your level of participation. If you like those long, drawn out jump scare videos on YouTube, you're in the right place. If you don't, steer clear, because this is essentially 100 minutes of just that.

The plot is on the slow-burn path of most found footage horrors, a subgenre this emulates but doesn't technically belong to. Two children, 4-year-old Kevin (Lucas Paul) and 6-year-old Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), awake in the middle of the night to find both their father and the doors to their home missing. The kids cope by watching cartoons in the living room, but things keep disappearing or rearranging and sometimes they venture into the dark, unsure of what exactly to do about the situation. The young performers are usually obscured or only partially on camera - we're seeing things from their perspective or watching their legs from under a piece of furniture. They're standing in for us, so it's something of an out-of-body experience whenever the camera catches a glimpse of their faces. But Ball is more interested in their voices and their hesitations to act than anything else. It's an effective use of child actors, but story progress is slow.

If this sounds a bit tedious, it is! You are trapped along with these children, and they're not all that proactive. So you squint into the grainy images of its mock 1995 camcorder-quality footage, trying to discern the threats before they are revealed. And the longer nothing is made clear, the greater the tension builds. Ball is toying with you, and his methods are shameless. The jump scares are unpleasant (although a few, including one late in the movie are very funny) and often accompanied by abusively loud noises. This is a film that features intentionally muffled dialogue (most accompanied by subtitles), making the screeching that comes with the reveals the most upsetting element. I spent the second half of the film with fingers over my ears. The merits of the visuals can be debated, but the sound design is unforgivable. I cannot imagine how terrible this will be for those watching with headphones.

Between the shrieks your mind will wander. Which adds another opportunity for the viewer to participate or tune out. You may, like me, start making up reasons for everything that's going on that may not really be supported by the narrative. I found myself hypothesizing that this is all the work of a spirit who got the wrong ideas about how to interact with people from the Fleischer cartoons that seem to always be on the TV - sort of an inadvertently malicious version of the aliens from Galaxy Quest. Then I decided it was a fever dream happening to a parent who was deeply worried about what their children get up to at night (this would explain the numerous shots of scattered Legos on the floor, the blaring TV, the blurry faces asking questions). Or maybe it's more simple. Maybe this is what every childhood is like in Canada.

Ball has talked openly about his process in interviews (Isaac Feldberg has an excellent one over at RogerEbert.com). I don't want to go into too much of it here, in case you prefer to go in cold, but it is worth noting that he shot the film in his childhood home. That level of familiarity must have helped; for as static as the film's composition often are, you can sense the familiarity with the space. He fixates on corners and brick walls, the way you or I might on little imperfections and oddities that we only notice after spending so much time in a place. Does that add enough to justify the pain? Again, mileage will vary.

Should you see Skinamarink? I don't know. I was miserable for a great deal of it, often disinterested but always very much on edge - a fascinating combination. I've never been in such a sustained and heightened level of tension throughout a horror movie. It's the kind of experience that begs to be discussed if you're willing to go through it. So... How uncomfortable is too uncomfortable for you?