Skinamarink

"Skinamarink" is undoubtedly one of the most unique viewing experiences in my existing memory, and it's rather challenging for me to truly pinpoint my own reaction and opinion of it. Depending on your taste, it can be equal parts a liminal horror masterpiece and a true tedium. I know one thing to be true, it requires absolute attention and maximum immersion to get out of it all that director Kyle Edward Ball intended to do to you.

Two little children, 5 year old Kaylee and her 4 years old brother Kevin, wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. Definitely sounds like a concept to bring a lot of creeps. And so it does. "Skinamarink" starts out with the slowest pacing I've ever experienced, and during the first 20-30 minutes one might feel the temptation to give up on this film. The entire cinematography, the sum of the 100 minute runtime consists almost exclusively of obscure shots of just about everything in the (director's childhood) house, except people. You practically don't see character's faces at all, only legs. Ceiling. Walls. Furniture. Darkness, a lot of darkness, holding within itself the dreadful sense than anything can come into your eyes and mind at any given time. The screen is full of grain and 70's-like screen scratches, the depthless dark keeps morphing, and the sense of dread is creeping-crawling around every corner of every frame. You know that weird, scary pile of clothes in your room in the middle of the night? This is that: the movie. It's an absolute trump move to put such youngins as main characters, the rebirth of your most primal childhood fears is what Kyle Edward Ball wants to offer you. Most people seek the kind of comfort an ignorant bliss they had as young children, but director of "Skinamarink" serves just the opposite of that spectrum.

It's a liminal, esoteric, ambient, analogue, lo-fi horror if I've ever seen one. And made with palpable, impressive confidence. Slowly, very slowly, but surely, "Skinamarink" lulls one into the deep sense of unease, hiding short, momentary glimpses of absolute terror inbetween long periods of almost sheer ambient nothingness. It's a movie that rewards the patient. Ball gives us a playground in which our imagination will do more work than the movie itself, and that's not a negative critique, but quite the feat.

"Skinamarink" creates a tiny yet massive world, from which there is no escape. Days after seeing it, I'm still trying to grasp what I saw, and on what scale I enjoyed it. This film has gotten the kind of buzz no art can buy, and rightly so, I believe it will be remembered as cult film, perhaps even as a revolutionary kind of horror. My rating: 7/10.