https://mashable.com/article/skinamarink-explainer
Horror is a genre that seems to have lost its touch in the 21st century. Besides a unique few, such as A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017), most modern-era horrors come off as cash grabs with jump scares sprinkled in to keep our hearts racing. Skinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball, 2022) isn’t one of those films. The movie was shot in seven days in August 2021 with a cumulative budget of 15,000 dollars. Additionally, Skinamarink’s director, Kyle Edward Ball, shot the film with a single digital camera.
In his production process, Ball stated that he wanted to invoke the terrifying feeling children get from a nightmare. He pulls it off with flying colors. Skinamarink never reveals a character’s face. We see the back of heads, chairs, stuffed animals, a television, and the ceiling. These still objects are all shot in grainy focus. The lack of humanity and recognizable characters adds to the surreal feeling of being a kid inside your house in the middle of the night with no light, wandering around to find a light switch. However, one of the movie’s few sources of life is the 1930s cartoon that the little boy, Kevin, is watching. Eventually, the TV begins to repeat itself. The same 2-second clip plays repeatedly. As a result, the viewer loses anything normal to cling to.
In my article, the author, Jason Adams notes that most shots in Skinamarink are placed at a child’s height. This transforms every object into an insurmountable obstacle. Door handles are often shot from a low angle. Windows are tough to reach. Escape is truly impossible. Furthermore, Ball plays with the idea of gravity and reality. Couches and toys appear on the ceiling with no explanation, building uncertainty within an already uncertain place. When objects began appearing on the ceiling, I realized that Skinamarink wasn’t going to tell much of a story. Its plot is almost non-existent. There are various interpretations of the film’s meaning. I won’t spoil the theories surrounding Skinamarink, but viewers still haven’t come to a consensus on its true meaning.
Despite its creativity, many people still dislike Skinamarink. It stands at a 4.9/10 on IMDB with over 13,000 user reviews. Most reviews cite it as a boring film that stretches for too long. I agree with this point. Skinamarink would have been more effective as a short film. However, Ball tried something new with this film. It’s unlike any other horror movie. It doesn’t rely on cheap scares to unease the viewer and it doesn’t reuse tropes we’ve seen countless times. For that, Skinamarink is something new and worth watching.