Skinamarink
Imagination is the main source of horror in an atmospheric assault on the senses.
Are you afraid of the dark: Lucas Paul
Extreme lo-fi is the hat trick of this viral horror sensation. Despite a title card that reads 1995, Kyle Edward Ball’s directorial debut feature looks more akin to a lost student film from the 1970s. Filmed entirely in Ball’s childhood home, the flickering, scratchy world of Skinamarink makes the cursed VHS tape from The Ring look like high-def. When creepy clips emerged across social media, there were echoes of The Blair Witch Project’s viral marketing campaign, but as it turns out, this wasn’t a marketing campaign at all. To the horror of Ball and the distributors, a technical glitch in the digital edition of Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival allowed viewers to click download. Pirated copies suddenly pervaded YouTube and TikTok, generating an enormous amount of attention. Some conspiracy theorists assert that Ball leaked the film himself. IFC Midnight and Shudder made a quick turn around on a theatrical run, capitalising on the sudden buzz. On a micro budget of just $15,000, Skinamarink captured over $2 million at the box-office.
A take on the old dark house genre, lights flicker, doors creak, and something is generally amiss in the home of the rarely seen protagonists Kevin and Kaylee. There’s always something coming from the next room, without the ability to quite make out what it is. A black-and-white movie echoes in the background. Whispers permeate throughout. There’s a phone conversation about sleepwalking. Dreams are certainly the theme here, with the film originating out of a YouTube project in which Ball focused on capturing the essence of collective nightmares. The project included such premises as waking up in the middle of the night, as Kevin and Kaylee do, to discover that their parents have vanished and been replaced by a dark presence.
Ball has an obsession with only showing a part of the picture. The top of a door frame, a section of floor, a shadowed corner of the ceiling. It’s here in the dark corners and hallways of the house that the camera most frequently lingers. These shots continue to accumulate, ratcheting up the suspense like a never-ending jack-in-the-box. As the pattern evolves, it’s this repetition of images and the disruption of the pattern that generates the scares. The best found footage horrors have an air of something that you shouldn’t be watching and Skinamarink oozes that feeling into every frame. The time Ball takes in these unrelenting static shots is maddening, which is perhaps the point. The dark, grainy images cause the imagination to take hold. Was that an empty corner, or did something just move? As things begin to disappear and reappear in the house, so things begin to appear in the mind of the viewer. There is little audible dialogue, but when whispers turn into clear commands, they send shivers down the spine. Yet there comes a certain point where patience wears as thin as the plot. This 100-minute hair-raiser is a whole lot longer than it needs to be, trapping the viewer in an unwavering nightmare. Like being dared to say “bloody mary” in the mirror, it’s the kind of experience that requires provocation to see it through – such as writing a review.
CHAD KENNERK
Cast: Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul, Jaime Hill.
Dir Kyle Edward Ball, Pro Dylan Pearce, Screenplay Kyle Edward Ball, Ph Jamie McRae, Ed Kyle Edward Ball.
Mutiny Pictures/ERO Picture Company-IFC Midnight/Shudder.
100 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 13 January 2023. UK Rel: 19 January 2023. Cert. 18.
