Skinamarink is a very strange movie. From the very beginning you aren't quite sure what is going on, and you keep thinking that around every corner you're going to find out, and you do find out some things, but you are very literally left in the dark for the entire film. Obviously shot on a less than shoestring budget, Skinamarink makes lack of budget and lack of everything a kind of budget. Like X it disguises itself as a film from a much earlier era. And like Blair Witch Project it uses POV as the basis for the entire film. But this is where Skinamarink is so very different. It is a POV of a small child and what we see is very little: ankles and ceilings and open or closed doors or part of the TV. You might be looking at a domed light fixture and just that while sounds happen and then the film cuts and your looking at the TV or building blocks. What the film makers manage to do is to create a claustrophobic atmosphere reminiscent of Polanski's Repulsion or something from Kubrick's early works. You don't know what you're looking at but you know something is very wrong and that is getting worse. The story, if we can call it that, of two children who wake up in a house where their parents appear and disappear and doorways and windows appear and disappear doesn't so much move forward as in a downwards spiral that we can barely understand, that we can barely see, that we can barely grasp. Skinamarink definitely isn't for everyone. It's a difficult movie to follow. But if you do, I think you'll find, as I did, a tense and moody horror film that is unlike any other horror film you've ever watched.
Review of Skinamarink
