I struggle to think of another film that has quite captured my thoughts in the way Skinamarink has. The feature film debut of Kyle Edward Ball, who was primarily known for similarly atmospheric horror on his YouTube channel “Bitesized Nightmares,” is certainly a film I want to revisit again and again. In fact I have. I’ve seen it three times now, the most recent being the time I watched the whole film from start to finish. Skinamarink is far from being a crowd-pleaser. The attention its drawn has been spurred on through a mixture of word-of-mouth and clips of the film leaking onto TikTok after its festival premiere. Now that it’s been public ally released through Shudder, the reaction has been generally mixed with some people hating it and others loving it. I find myself in the latter though it took some time to get there.
The story of two children who find themselves trapped in their home without their parents or without any doors and windows to the outside world, the film is the sharpest example in recent memory of a film that succeeds in generating frights through atmosphere alone. It’s an utterly unique experience the film tries to recreate, quite possibly one some people fail to remember or connect to. We experience Skinamarink in extreme close-ups of walls, ceilings, door frames. The sound we hear is muffled (subtitles have been added) almost always as if from another room. Some sounds are amplified while others remain soft and distant. What I sense is that Ball tries to recreate the feeling of drifting to sleep as a child and I think it absolutely works.
The narrative is loose and sometimes intentionally incoherent as if the children are trapped within the realm of a dream. Characters die, then come back, only to be gone again. All this we are told only in snippets though, our access to the full story coming only in short whispers and suggestive visual shorthand. This is the type of film that easily could find itself fodder for YouTube videos titled “Skinamarink explained!” or something similar but it works best in just allowing yourself to soak in the world the film wants you to be part of.
Given how loose the film’s narrative is, it’s difficult to elaborate further as Skinamarink is quite a simplistic film at its core told in an extremely obtuse but unique way. I know for certain I will watch this again and I know some of the imagery will still haunt me as I think back on it for weeks to come.
Chronicler of the Dark 