At a time when major streaming services are casually erasing whole shows from existence, we should be grateful to Acorn Media for their continuing run of Blu-Ray releases of Shudder exclusives. It also opens up one of those questions of format that a certain kind of Bazin-besotted film theorist loves to ponder: is watching a film on streaming the same experience as watching it on disc? This is about more than just different cuts, or censorship. Kyle Edward Ball’s feature debut Skinamarink is a film saturated in the online; spun off from a short film Ball released on his YouTube channel, which was itself inspired by subscriber comments, it is the purest attempt yet at translating the internet aesthetic of liminal horror into film form. It also received its earliest mass audience through TikTok, a platform that has yet to transform the film industry as completely as it’s transformed pop music.
The phenomenon that I guess we have to call SkinamarinkTok was based on a copy leaked from one of the film’s early festival showings. This points up the most rewarding reason for this Blu-Ray to exist; the picture quality is a massive upgrade on any copy you’ll see online. That’s true of any streaming film that makes it to Blu-Ray, but it’s particularly necessary in the case of Ball’s shadowy, indeterminate work. Finally, you can work out which sinister images in the darkness were deliberately included by the director and which were just compression artefacts!
As for the other ambiguities the film contains, repeat viewings might take you closer to the mystery of why Kevin and Kaylee are trapped in a house that seems to be rearranging itself to make it impossible for them to escape. Or it may not. It should be clear to even the most literal viewer that Skinamarink‘s narrative is aiming for the feel of a sleep paralysis dream, a chain of events organised by their ability to create a feeling of helplessness rather than narrative or world-building. Ball has cited Maya Deren and Chantal Akerman among his inspirations, which sounds like rank pretension but is, in fact, absolutely sound: there really is something of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles‘s sense of domestic and formal imprisonment in the film’s constant, mechanical pans across corners and ceilings. And that’s officially the Best Film Ever Made, so this must be good, right?
I’m not sure Skinamarink is a quantum leap in horror, more the seeds of some revolution to come – but most films don’t even get that close to genuine innovation. The fact that something this strange and uncommercial can be a major talking point is a good thing whatever you think of the film.
To a point, yes. We’re currently living in the best time for experimental horror since, well, ever, with Skinamarink joining Travis Stevens’s A Wounded Faun, Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men in a wave of films producing deep unease from their rejection of conventional narrative and visual devices. I haven’t seen Stevens’s film, so I can’t comment on how it relates to Skinamarink. Compared to Schoenbrun and Jenkin’s work, it oddly seems to split the difference: the online reference points of the first, the grainy retrophilia of the second. The question is whether these things cancel each other out. Skinamarink often feels like it’s on the verge of something radically new and modern, but it’s also full of references to spooky old children’s songs, public domain cartoons, retro toys and other rather more familiar horror movie props. It’s too fascinated by what’s gone by to make a grand statement on what horror can be in the digital age, which is what Schoenbrun’s film amounts to, but equally it can’t be as effective a piece of hauntology as Enys Men. The digital film grain, which is such a palpable texture in this Blu-Ray transfer, is a good metaphor for the whole project.
The surveillance-cam aesthetic and frequent POV shots mean Skinamarink has a certain commonality with found footage horror. Approached in that spirit, the film’s child’s-eye viewpoint is a masterstroke; at least we’re spared the endless variations on “ohmigod bro what the fuck was that” that make up the dialogue for most found-footage films. The film never overdoes Kevin’s resilience – he’s always a scared child wishing his parents were around – but it doesn’t wallow distastefully in his fear, if only because he is so rarely on screen. For most of the film, you’re inside his head, seeing what he sees, which is an effectively helpless place to be. I’m not sure Skinamarink is a quantum leap in horror, more the seeds of some revolution to come – but most films don’t even get that close to genuine innovation. The fact that something this strange and uncommercial can be a major talking point is a good thing whatever you think of the film.
The disc contains a commentary from Ball and cinematographer Jamie McRae. Anyone who wants to believe their favourite horror directors are Gothic, tortured souls, look away now: the commentary is extremely funny. Ball talks a lot about getting the right mid-’90s period details, frequently in scenes which didn’t strike me as archaic. (In fairness, I may just live in an old house full of old crap) But he also kvetches entertainingly about bad reviews, nitpicks shots that didn’t quite work and shares the odd indiscreet story from the interview and festival circuits. Finally, we have an answer to the question at the start of this review: watching Skinamarink with the writer-director talking over the top about how surprised he was that Jezebel.com sent a hot guy with nice glasses to interview him is definitely a different experience.
Skinamarink is available to buy on Acorn Media Blu-Ray and Shudder
