SKINAMARINK (2023)
When I was a kid sometimes I would close my eyes really tight and look at the brown swirling patterns that would dance on the back of my eyelids. I would wonder if this would be like if I was blind, if those same patterns that manifest in the dark would still be there, or if they too would be imperceptible. Now if I close my eyes I don't even register the noise my vision creates in the total darkness. It's more expected now, so it just goes by unnoticed. A lot of life is like that as you grow older. Your brain has accumulated more knowledge of the world so it fills in the sensory gaps for you. When you're young you don't understand that much of the world around you, so every sense is in a constant state of exploration.
Skinamarink reminds me of that feeling. A cross between Meshes of the Afternoon and The Blair Witch Project, the movie is a series of somewhat abstract images that create something like a waking nightmare. The camera is deliberately very grainy, with both the artifacting from the low light video imagery pushed to it's furthest and the imperfections of the digital film stock superimposed on creating a constant state of visual motion, creating even more uncertainty in terms of what you see in the image. Is there something in the negative space, or are your eyes playing tricks on you?
Spoilers Ahead
For the most part, the camera is very static, focusing on the tableau created by the house's geography. This movie isn't traditional "found footage," in that there is no framing device as to how the footage was obtained. But it deliberately takes from the subgenre's visuals. One of the great things that found footage does is put the viewers in the confines of the frame. In a more traditionally structured film, there is always room for an edit. Something as simple as cross coverage allows you to orient yourself in the same space as the characters and relieve the tension on screen. Found footage, by it's nature presented as "unedited," creates horror from both the situation and by what is revealed by the camera. You're not given the chance to see the world outside of the camera's perspective, cause the camera's existence within the movie is so forefronted that it cannot be hidden by the magic of Hollywood editing. Here the camera itself isn't a part of the narrative, but the deliberation behind each image works towards the same means. The frame isn't always strictly a POV shot, but the film is trying to embody a child's perspective, so what we see always has significance and scale, even if it as simple as a light fixture in a hallway.
As you get older you recognize that spaces that once felt mammoth are actually much smaller in proportion to the rest of the world. Your house is a labyrinth and every room is a dungeon, then one day it's simply a house. Same with people. We give the adults in our lives such power in our own psyches because, though at the end of the day they are flawed human beings like anyone else, they are the source of our survival and we cannot imagine a world without them.
This is a movie about children. It is about being a child and the awful things that people do to them. Towards the beginning of the film we hear the dad on the phone with someone explaining how Kevin had an accident falling down the stairs. We can infer that this story is perhaps not a true one. At another moment Kevin is on the phone with 911 explaining how he has been hurt. The dispatcher calmly repeats and affirms Kevin's story but ultimately Kevin will not get help. Kaylee and Kevin are completely at the whims of the evil around them. They cannot escape because the doors and windows keep disappearing but, reasonably, where could they go?
The fear of a nightmare comes not from the fact it’s a bunch of scary images in your brain but because you’re not given agency over your actions. You are forced to act out the scenario in front of you, and the only way to escape is to wake up, which you cannot control because you are dreaming so you don’t even know you’re asleep. Powerlessness is another attribute to being a child. You do not have the language to advocate for yourself nor the stamina to be anything but helpless to the adults around you. In one horrible moment the evil presence in the house beckons Kaylee upstairs. I was begging her under my breath not to go but of course what else can she do? The kids in the movie don't act like rational actors in their own horror because they really are not.
The television is a constant presence in the film, it’s glow providing a respite from the darkness enveloping everything around the children. But it is hardly a source of comfort, seeing it is stuck on the Creepy Public Domain Cartoons channel. Eventually the horrors transform from dread to violence. Kaylee is disfigured and disappears. Kevin stabs himself in the eye. A trail of blood pools in the hallway, before reversing back towards its source. Time becomes impossible to track. Skinamarink is not the kind of movie that benefits from an "explainer" on what it is truly about. It isn't a puzzlebox, but more of an attempt to capture the texture of being young and afraid.
The first nightmare I remembered was when I was 3 years old. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid, a total freak about it. I would learn all their scientific names, read endless books about them, the works. But my first nightmare was a pack of velociraptors climbing my childhood stairs. I remember the sound of them climbing the landing, their giant claws clicking on the banister. (Sounding suspiciously familiar to the radiator clanging in the night.) Then they would open the door, screech, and jump onto the bed, tearing my guts out. I don't remember my reaction waking up, nor anything about my conscious self at all. But I remember that nightmare.
