Skinamarink

MOVIE #1,214 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.30.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! I'm not a purist by any means but there is something that feels a little forced when shooting in digital and adding filters to make it look like grainy 8mm. Still, this is so slow and vibey that it wouldn't have worked at all with a flat unfiltered sheen (and it's fun to track the fake cigarette burns as they repeat, I suppose). This was a very buzzy movie from late 2022 and while it’s definitely trying to do something "new" that’s only admirable on a conceptual level because the finished product leaves a lot to be desired. Writer-director Kyle Edward Ball cited Stan Brakhage and Maya Derens as influences, and while it's easy to see large swaths of this as an experimental film, it's difficult to parse those elements with it's overall desire to be a commercial horror picture.

I think I would (or could) like something with this aesthetic if it wasn't so explicitly trying to be a horror film. As a parent, the scariest thing here is the room full of Legos on the ground. Somebody (me) is gonna step on one!

This is an endurance test. The only real action is when the camera occasionally moves and/or something weird happens like a chair appears on the ceiling, or a Barbie doll on the ceiling. Basically stuff stuck to the ceiling. It's all static shots from low and off angles with subtitles for the child's whispers, although not all of them for some reason: I really didn’t like the selective subtitles and could think of no purpose for withholding only some of this dialogue (and a minor peeve: there is some inconsistency in the grammar deployed). It does achieve a creepiness that transcends any disingenuousness but at 100 minutes, you can tell it's gonna be 20 too long in the opening moments.

Windows and doors disappear, like Relic (or the book House of Leaves) done in reverse, a simple concept and sometimes that's all you need. Sometimes. This needed more.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,213 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,215 ⫸

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Skinamarink is a 2022 Canadian supernatural horror film written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature directorial debut. The film follows two children who wake up during the night to discover that they cannot find their father, and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are disappearing. It was released on July 25, 2022.