Written, Edited, and Directed by Kyle Edward Ball
Cinematography by Jamie McRae
Produced by Dylan Pearce
Starring
Lucas Paul
Dali Rose Tetreault
Ross Paul
Jaime Hill
. . .
"Come upstairs."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
The camera is in the house. It's looking mostly at the house itself, and the stuff inside the house. When the camera does dwell on the people inside the house it can be disturbing. Like the old philosophical warning about staring too long into the abyss, because the abyss is gazing right back at you. The camera is seemingly a mobile staring abyss thing, warping from one obtuse setup to another.
None of this was obvious to me, at first, because I basically assumed Skinamarink to be some sort of found footage flick, and, in the early going, it looks like it could be that. The look is rigorously grainy, and obviously a digital post-production effect, but it's done with such artistry and commitment that the artifice gives no offense. You stare at the swirling shadows within shot after static shot of empty corners and bare walls and your mind starts to conjure patterns from the visual noise. You try to impose order on Skinamarink, and Skinamarink sorta meets you halfway as it reveals itself to be an avant garde haunted house show, but the eeriness of the inescapable house, the slow burn pacing, and the phantoms you invent within your mind-that's where it all truly lives.
There are kids in the house. They're watching cartoons on the TV in the downstairs living room. Adult authorities are upstairs. Legos are all over the floor before the TV. There are strange whispers. Chairs and dolls stick to the ceiling. Sometimes indistinct voices are subtitled, sometimes they are not subtitled. There's some scenes where doors and windows inexplicably disappear. Things escalate. It is both cryptic and upsetting. There's no escape from the house. Something is taking over. It's a bit like that Julio Cortazar short story where the brother and sister find their childhood house being slowly invaded room by room by some sinister something.
Skinamarink withholds all answers. It makes you sit in a sinister place with just enough ambient light to see disturbing entities and occurrences. Amusingly, its handful of jumpscares are underplayed almost to the point of anticlimax. Skinamarink is more "Universe winding down into Absolute Zero" than anything else. The pacing is unhurried, some might say it's too slow, but the duration is part of the experience. If you want to watch the crashing cars, that's not this movie.
Skinamarink offers visual fascination almost as an end unto itself. It could easily function as a video installation. Just put it on for the atmosphere once you've absorbed it as a narrative experience, if you want.
