Skinamarink (2022)

What better way to kick off a new year of movies than with an experimental horror film? Skinamarink was written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature directorial debut. While this movie was released theatrically on January 13, 2023, it saw its first release at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal on July 25, 2022, and is based on the director’s 2020 short film titled Heck (which I have to admit, I went and watched after viewing this film). The movie was made on a mostly crowdfunded micro-budget of fifteen thousand dollars and is a new form of the “haunted house” horror subgenre.

     The movie takes place in 1995 and is shot on a camera that feels like it’s from the same generation. As someone who was roughly the same age as the boy in the movie Kevin at that time, the nostalgia was real. I also must say, there is more to this film than the simple haunted house spin. It’s a movie that makes the audience work to decipher what’s going on with each obscure shot, as the various actions throughout happen out of frame. This leaves the viewer having to figure out what is happening based on sounds previously established in the earlier scenes of the film. We spend the majority of the film with the two kids as they cope with their current circumstances via vague shots and subtitled dialogue. 

     An arguable character of the movie is the encroaching darkness that threatens the two youths as the lights begin to go out. It beckons them to “come upstairs” so it can torture them further. It is in these segments that we get the various POV shots from the kids and we get, what I consider to be, the most terrifying moments of the film. Ball uses noisy ISO video and loud audio static to drive home that sense of impending dread. The shots of dark hallway and doorways are the most nerve-wracking as it forces our minds to make shapes and faces in the moving noise until, inevitably, there are faces within. However, not all scares are original, and the film does sometimes rely on jump scares in the form of creepy imagery accompanied by a loud audi sting that I couldn’t help but feel would be more effective if left in static silence.

     Skinamarink is, in all manner of the meaning, an experimental horror film. Ball forces us to relive what made us scared of the dark in our youth and try and decipher what is happening to these kids and why. It’s a movie in that I can see many giving their own interpretation of what is happening within the story. Personally, I think it’s the house is a coma-induced limbo in which the young boy Kevin is in after his accidental fall down a flight of steps at the film’s beginning. Even though we hear the dad say that he’s okay, and doesn’t even need stitches, I believe this is a red herring. My buddy, that saw the film with me, had his own interpretation of what was happening and also made a compelling argument for why he came to his own conclusion.

     Skinamarink is not a film for the run-of-the-mill popcorn muncher, and I can see many average moviegoers going as far as to dismiss this movie to just downright despising it. I personally cannot wait to rewatch this movie when it makes its debut on Shudder later this year as I feel it’s a flick that warrants multiple viewings. However, if you’re a horror movie enthusiast, that wants to see everything the genre has to offer, then this is without a doubt a movie to check out and judge for yourself. It’s a movie that makes you work for the answers while simultaneously reminding you of why you once feared the darkest corners of your own home.