 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Skinamarink (no spoilers) by Fullofkittens 01/16/2023, 11:54am PST | ||||
 |
 |
|||
|
If you wanted to go see this in theaters, you missed your chance, because it was in theaters this last weekend in the USA only, before heading to Shudder on some TBD later date. I went to see it in the theater and I can happily report that this is probably better to watch at home anyways. The correct way to watch it is in perfect darkness on a not-theater-sized screen, if only because the "graininess" of the film is noticeably some kind of transparent mask that doesn't look that great at theater scale. That's not a knock on the film, which is actually pretty accomplished and does a lot on a tiny, tiny budget (reportedly $15,000). My review: the first 30-45 minutes of this thing works incredibly well. The elevator pitch: "two young kids find that all of the exterior doors and windows of their house have disappeared and that instead of their parents, some malevolent entity is calling them from upstairs." That is accurate but doesn't really describe what's interesting about it which is that this thing goes ALL in on being arty as shit. I occasionally laughed in the theater when it occurred to me that this movie is what "elevated horror" would look like as portrayed on The Simpsons. In the positive column: The film successfully makes you remember what it was like to be a small child that is afraid in the dark. I was remembering specific moments from my childhood - you get a lot of time to think in this movie - when I was scared to death lying in my dark bedroom. There is a scene about 40-ish minutes(?) into the runtime where I was as scared as I have ever been in a theater. At that moment I was all in. In the negative column: that scene is the best part of the movie and it doesn't keep that momentum. The film goes on for another hour and it is a real test of an audience's patience. What the director tried to do here: tell a scary ghost story at feature length with no real characters, almost no dialogue, and is told mostly by pointing a camera at unmoving objects in the dark...that's got a very, very high degree of difficulty and this first-time feature director didn't pull it off, in my opinion. It's simultaneously both too hard to tell what's happening and too repetitive. Another thing that probably would be good about watching it at home is that you can go back and rewatch things and figure out wtf you're looking at. It's an experimental film and experiments don't have to turn out well to be successful experiments. I don't regret watching it and I'm glad it got a theatrical release. I think I do(...?) recommend it for horror fans once it drops on Shudder, because it is a huge creative swing and even if it's not a fully successful movie there's something about it that does get under your skin a bit. I do keep thinking about it. |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
Skinamarink (no spoilers) by 01/16/2023, 11:54am PST  A better micro budget horror movie by 01/16/2023, 12:30pm PST Lake Mungo is one of my top 10 horror movies of all time (it's on Shudder rn) NT by 01/16/2023, 12:35pm PST Spoiler: the monster was Elephant the whole time. NT by 01/16/2023, 12:55pm PST |
