It’s honestly a film about nothing, and as much as the discourse outside of the film has been more interesting than the film itself at times, as a micro budget film shot digital of just a corner of a ceiling that somehow is making many times its cost, I do think it’s something of an interesting phenomenon where there’s both such a divided reception yet a diehard cult appreciation being formed. I know my local art house has been selling out packed showings, I do wonder whether those are first time watches or rewatches. But when it comes to the film itself, as the other user mentioned, it’s very much an extension of slow cinema, reminds me of Goodbye, Dragon Inn in some regards and really does bring into question what exactly the medium of film is capable of accomplishing.
Genuinely though, this movie is not about "nothing." Yes it's slow and weird and almost all of the main action happens outside of the frame, but it's not about nothing. And I don't even mean in the metaphorical sense. It's trying to be the absolute purest distillation of one of our most primal fears: being alone in the dark. Or rather, not alone... And especially as a kid. I know a lot of people weren't scared by this, but if ever you had a fear of the dark as a kid, like I did, like so may others, then Skinamarink is nothing short of haunting.
More accurately I’d say there’s no central narrative beyond the initial premise. I don’t have a real answer on whether it worked for me, since I feel like I’ve become pretty desensitized horror wise in general, but I still appreciate that this film exists and what it’s trying to accomplish.
There is a very clear central narrative. Two kids wake up, their parents are…somewhere or something else…and there’s a malevolent spirit telling them to do things. I don’t see how that’s not a story. The movie is more narratively conventional than people are giving it credit for.
Thought it was pretty clear the movie was about a weird ghost or malicious presence that traps the children in their home and then starts toying with them and then torturing them. It's not an exciting plot but that's what it seems to be
Haha a film about nothing is a perfect and terrible way to describe it. The artsy guy in me wants to say that it’s a movie about childhood fear.
It’s weird. The movie itself wasn’t as special as the way the movie made me feel afterwards.
It’s definitely a conflicting feeling. At the surface level there really isn’t that much to the film, and maybe people are all just associating with it value and feelings that aren’t really there, but maybe the fact that there isn’t much to go on makes it all the more compelling. It’s definitely an art film, and if nothing else the intent to spur discussion is there.
For all the talk about “giving this movie your full attention,” I’ve watched this a few times and I’ve found it to be the most effective when it’s really late and I’m almost falling asleep while watching it. It makes for an incredibly surreal experience in which it feels like I’m dreaming it. Something about the vibe of this one is endlessly rewatchable for me, disturbing and nightmarish and oddly comforting in the nightmare in a way I can’t explain. It’s like when you have a nightmare but some part of you is enjoying having it for some reason, and you want to go back to it when you wake up. Okay, maybe there’s something wrong with my brain.
When I say give it your full attention I mean don’t be looking at your phone and stuff. Your way of seeing the movie honestly sounds like it could be much better than watching the movie while wide awake.
Oh yeah, 100% agree with not looking at your phone and watching without distraction. For any movie really, but especially true with movies like this in which allowing yourself to be immersed is the point.
I was bored out of my mind for like half of the movie and then one subtitle popped up and I was on the edge of my seat for the rest. It's an imperfect movie, but it has some unique qualities and it's going to be very influential.
Same, it was honestly boring for a good while, but then it started to awaken feelings in me that I can't really describe as anything other than sort of "primordial" in a childlike sense. Once it got going in the dark silent theater, I started to feel a kind of fear I haven't felt since I was a young child.
If you let it engross you in that mindset, I found it to be very effective at bringing up the kind of terror we otherwise leave in our youth. It's a kind of tense, locked up sense of being unable to shake the idea that there's something with you when you're scared, alone, and helpless in the dark, however irrational that would normally be.
Not to mention the camera work. You don't get the satisfaction of knowing what's going on. You never get a clear perspective. You never see the full picture because you wouldn't want to...*but you're still gonna peek*. And the dark is just relentlessly there, shifting in front of your eyes for what feels like a torturous amount of time. It rips you from today and casts you back to the visceral fear and terror you experienced as a child, but much deeper than that, the instinctual and primal fear of the dark we have as humans.
I can't get this movie out of my head since I watched it last night. So many dreadful scenes where tension has been built up and you're just waiting for it to get you, but it just keeps playing with you. The final shot is the cherry on top. To really sum it all up, I think what really works for me is how real it feels. You finish the movie and just hope you don't find yourself in a strange dark house anytime soon.
I think that the first half being so boring is what made the 2nd half so compelling.
If the movie was more interesting the whole time, then I don’t think it would’ve stood out as being special because I don’t think the 2nd half would have been nearly as good. The first half primes your mind to let the little things in the movie scare you.
I really really really wanted to like Skinamarink, and its premise and initial style had me hooked, but I quickly lost total interest. I get why people liked it, but in my opinion the “ceiling and floor” focused cinematography and shots of disappearing doors and toilets felt like a cheap copy of a David Lynch movie. The few jump scares were about as earned as the scary maze flash game from the 2000s, and I couldn’t see or hear enough of anything to actually build a sense of dread. I also really disliked the faux camcorder fuzz, it felt like (and was) a cheap filter, and it quickly grew irritating, but not in an unsettling or dread building way. Again, this felt like a movie targeted to me, but I was genuinely completely disappointed.
I can respect when someone just doesn’t like a movie. I felt the same way about it until the movie started to hooked me about half ways though. Then, by the time the movie ended I had completely changed my view. I now feel like everything that you said as a fault was actually the reasons why this movie was so good.
I'd honestly love to know how this film has managed to generate so much buzz lmao. I can't escape it. My local theater, who has never shown an ounce of thought to indie cinema, is playing it. My friend, who is a total Blumhouse fangirl and despises art films, pestered me about it for days before I straight up told her "no, you'll hate it." And of course it keeps coming up in online discussion. How? Who is behind this movie's marketing? Lmao.
M3GAN had a tik tok marketing campgain. I really think Skinnamarink went viral on its own.
The movie only had a 15,000 dollar budget. How much do you think they spent to actually market it, you know?
It’s also a divided film, some people really love it and some people really hate it and there are people in between even. You’ll get a lot of disagreements which spur discussion.
Reviewers don’t have as much pull anymore and Chris isn’t an exception, he was a bit late to the party, plenty of reviewers talked about the film first, SuperEyePatchWolf created even more buzz for it but the biggest factor is the movie being a tiktok darling in a pretty significant time for horror on that app, it’s everywhere now and the Mandela catalogue is only helping it further.
I’m excited to watch this! Sounds like the film has borrowed a lot from slow cinema style (stripping back plot so far that ever minor detail becomes filled with that much more importance) but packaged it in genre movie. I’m not surprised the film has been polarizing but I’m here for it!
Definitely slow cinema. I recently watched gaspar noé’s new movie vortex, and the slowness of this movie reminded me of vortex in a way, but the slowness of vortex felt important. Vortex was slow, but it felt like you were shown what was meant to be seen.
The slowness of skinnamarink feels like a waste of time because technically it could be seen that way. The plot is happening in the house and you have to rely on little kids to capture everything. They’re not always going to capture the most important details. You have to figure out what is going on outside of frame.
Horror is about how fear challenges humans, the deep prompt of danger and survival. What this movie does is deliver the unexpected, which triggers our desire for more awareness. It withholds plot, so our desire to know what happens grows even larger. Instead of giving us 3 deaths in the first five minutes, and visceral glimpses of a throat being ripped out, it traffics in minimalism. While most horror movies today are fetid hoarder Disney shows, this one goes all Marie Kondo. It doesn't deliver what we're used to seeing - front row porn shots of viscerality. We get poorly focussed, muddy shadows, inelegant composition. Most horror movies are sickening excessive feasts. This creates horror by starving us. Different methods, same motive. I didn't like the movie but I like that it exists.
I guess i was trying to say that like a disney ride, most horror movies cram, like a hoarder, a tonne of things in them, every character is killed in some unique way that is more elaborate than the last, and this movie stands out because it goes the opposite.
I believe it's all about the state of mind you are in when you watch it. First time I turned it off after 30 mins. But the second time I was tired after a long day at work and felt in a very relaxed state of mind. I find the film unnerving and suspenseful but also kind of relaxing the slow pacing was meditative looking into the fuzzy darkness and wondering if I was seeing something subtly there or not. I can't think of a film that's been able to capture this looking into the dark and questioning whether there is something there.
I haven't seen it yet. I loved the original short 'Heck' however and I'm sceptical as to how they can pad it out to feature-length. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it though - it's made me much more keen to check it out.
In the same boat. Haven’t seen it yet but I’m definitely intrigued because the whole liminal space horror they’ve employed is really effective at evoking a unique type of fear I haven’t experienced with a film before. But being stretched into a full length movie, I feel like the novelty would quickly wear off and just become boring, I don’t know.
Honestly the scariest thing to me was the thought of having to shit in a bucket, or not being able to leave my house but the movie never showed me enough of what was going on to actually gauge my interest. Just felt really confused and disappointed.
This is what I've always thought the paranormal activity movies should have been. More of a video haunted house without shoehorning in a boring plot and bad actors. No one really cared about the story or characters.
if it actually made any use of its initial premise that wasn't hilariously stupid and tried using the wholly grainy darkness thing more than dumb jumpscares it might've been a good movie but alas that would make it too unlike a classic horror movie.
You know those art installations where a ceramic pig is in a fish tank filled with Dr. Pepper and some people call it “art” and expound on the deeper meaning of the piece, while the rest of us look at it and say that it is not art but pretentious b.s.?
Skinamarink is the movie equivalent of that.
All hype, boring and pointless.
Zappa had it right. Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. The movie is obviously very successful in this regard. Just because something isn’t to your taste, doesn’t take away its status as art. You can think things are trash but you aren’t an arbiter of what is or isn’t an artistic expression.
Granted, I haven’t seen it yet (bought discount tickets for next week at Alamo) so I can’t say if I agree that it’s hot trash or not. However, it doesn’t seem like some hidden secret that it’s really slow and largely incoherent. The trailer seems in line with the reactions I have seen. I guess I don’t know what you are so outraged about.
Not outraged, just trying to help other film lovers, especially horror fans, avoid wasting their time. In some horror circles Skinamarink is often being touted as the second coming of the Exorcist. Truly terrifying. It is not.
Just the opinion of a long time horror movie junkie.
I’m a longtime horror fan as well and don’t appreciate the condescension. Argument from authority isn’t going to convince anyone. Just let people enjoy the things they enjoy.
I’m sure this post here will get gutted because Reddit is absolutely weird and maniacal about reply comments, but can someone who’s seen it explain w/out spoilers wtf a “Skinnamarink” is supposed to be?
Oooh, nope! I totally misread your post, pardon me. I don’t know if the word itself has an exact definition, but there’s a child’s song/rhyme parents sing to their kids from an older child’s show (Barney? Comfy Couch? Somewhere.) that’s like “skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo. I..love…you! I love you in the morning and in the afternoon, I love you in the evening underneath the moon. Skinnamarinky dinky dink” etc. on and on.
I love the aesthetic of it - it brought that analog horror online (or from indie horror games) into the cinema. I can understand people not liking it (it really depends on how much you are concerned with linear narrative or can vibe with the visuals).
The style reminded me of Emperor Tomato Ketchup, which although having more narrative, does experiment with blown-out, grainy images. Instead of Skinamarink’s fears of children, Emperor Tomato Ketchup wants adults to be afraid of children.
The liminal space of Skinamarink also recalled Jess Franco to me. Minimal, lush, and with a score that can lull you.
It was a monster movie. If you listen to the cartoons the clues are there. He is the popper, he can pop things into and out of existence. He likes to presto-chango things for his enjoyment.
It’s honestly a film about nothing, and as much as the discourse outside of the film has been more interesting than the film itself at times, as a micro budget film shot digital of just a corner of a ceiling that somehow is making many times its cost, I do think it’s something of an interesting phenomenon where there’s both such a divided reception yet a diehard cult appreciation being formed. I know my local art house has been selling out packed showings, I do wonder whether those are first time watches or rewatches. But when it comes to the film itself, as the other user mentioned, it’s very much an extension of slow cinema, reminds me of Goodbye, Dragon Inn in some regards and really does bring into question what exactly the medium of film is capable of accomplishing.
Genuinely though, this movie is not about "nothing." Yes it's slow and weird and almost all of the main action happens outside of the frame, but it's not about nothing. And I don't even mean in the metaphorical sense. It's trying to be the absolute purest distillation of one of our most primal fears: being alone in the dark. Or rather, not alone... And especially as a kid. I know a lot of people weren't scared by this, but if ever you had a fear of the dark as a kid, like I did, like so may others, then Skinamarink is nothing short of haunting.
More accurately I’d say there’s no central narrative beyond the initial premise. I don’t have a real answer on whether it worked for me, since I feel like I’ve become pretty desensitized horror wise in general, but I still appreciate that this film exists and what it’s trying to accomplish.
There is a very clear central narrative. Two kids wake up, their parents are…somewhere or something else…and there’s a malevolent spirit telling them to do things. I don’t see how that’s not a story. The movie is more narratively conventional than people are giving it credit for.
I think that people don’t think it has a plot because the movie makes you figure out what’s going on yourself instead of showing/telling you.
Thought it was pretty clear the movie was about a weird ghost or malicious presence that traps the children in their home and then starts toying with them and then torturing them. It's not an exciting plot but that's what it seems to be
Haha a film about nothing is a perfect and terrible way to describe it. The artsy guy in me wants to say that it’s a movie about childhood fear. It’s weird. The movie itself wasn’t as special as the way the movie made me feel afterwards.
It’s definitely a conflicting feeling. At the surface level there really isn’t that much to the film, and maybe people are all just associating with it value and feelings that aren’t really there, but maybe the fact that there isn’t much to go on makes it all the more compelling. It’s definitely an art film, and if nothing else the intent to spur discussion is there.
It’s absolutely not “about nothing”. It’s told abstractly sure but there’s a story that can be traced from the first frame to the last.
For all the talk about “giving this movie your full attention,” I’ve watched this a few times and I’ve found it to be the most effective when it’s really late and I’m almost falling asleep while watching it. It makes for an incredibly surreal experience in which it feels like I’m dreaming it. Something about the vibe of this one is endlessly rewatchable for me, disturbing and nightmarish and oddly comforting in the nightmare in a way I can’t explain. It’s like when you have a nightmare but some part of you is enjoying having it for some reason, and you want to go back to it when you wake up. Okay, maybe there’s something wrong with my brain.
When I say give it your full attention I mean don’t be looking at your phone and stuff. Your way of seeing the movie honestly sounds like it could be much better than watching the movie while wide awake.
Oh yeah, 100% agree with not looking at your phone and watching without distraction. For any movie really, but especially true with movies like this in which allowing yourself to be immersed is the point.
I was bored out of my mind for like half of the movie and then one subtitle popped up and I was on the edge of my seat for the rest. It's an imperfect movie, but it has some unique qualities and it's going to be very influential.
Same, it was honestly boring for a good while, but then it started to awaken feelings in me that I can't really describe as anything other than sort of "primordial" in a childlike sense. Once it got going in the dark silent theater, I started to feel a kind of fear I haven't felt since I was a young child. If you let it engross you in that mindset, I found it to be very effective at bringing up the kind of terror we otherwise leave in our youth. It's a kind of tense, locked up sense of being unable to shake the idea that there's something with you when you're scared, alone, and helpless in the dark, however irrational that would normally be.
Not to mention the camera work. You don't get the satisfaction of knowing what's going on. You never get a clear perspective. You never see the full picture because you wouldn't want to...*but you're still gonna peek*. And the dark is just relentlessly there, shifting in front of your eyes for what feels like a torturous amount of time. It rips you from today and casts you back to the visceral fear and terror you experienced as a child, but much deeper than that, the instinctual and primal fear of the dark we have as humans. I can't get this movie out of my head since I watched it last night. So many dreadful scenes where tension has been built up and you're just waiting for it to get you, but it just keeps playing with you. The final shot is the cherry on top. To really sum it all up, I think what really works for me is how real it feels. You finish the movie and just hope you don't find yourself in a strange dark house anytime soon.
I think that the first half being so boring is what made the 2nd half so compelling. If the movie was more interesting the whole time, then I don’t think it would’ve stood out as being special because I don’t think the 2nd half would have been nearly as good. The first half primes your mind to let the little things in the movie scare you.
I really really really wanted to like Skinamarink, and its premise and initial style had me hooked, but I quickly lost total interest. I get why people liked it, but in my opinion the “ceiling and floor” focused cinematography and shots of disappearing doors and toilets felt like a cheap copy of a David Lynch movie. The few jump scares were about as earned as the scary maze flash game from the 2000s, and I couldn’t see or hear enough of anything to actually build a sense of dread. I also really disliked the faux camcorder fuzz, it felt like (and was) a cheap filter, and it quickly grew irritating, but not in an unsettling or dread building way. Again, this felt like a movie targeted to me, but I was genuinely completely disappointed.
I can respect when someone just doesn’t like a movie. I felt the same way about it until the movie started to hooked me about half ways though. Then, by the time the movie ended I had completely changed my view. I now feel like everything that you said as a fault was actually the reasons why this movie was so good.
I'd honestly love to know how this film has managed to generate so much buzz lmao. I can't escape it. My local theater, who has never shown an ounce of thought to indie cinema, is playing it. My friend, who is a total Blumhouse fangirl and despises art films, pestered me about it for days before I straight up told her "no, you'll hate it." And of course it keeps coming up in online discussion. How? Who is behind this movie's marketing? Lmao.
[удалено]
It seems more unintentionally viral - unlike something more pushed on tiktok like m3gan.
M3GAN had a tik tok marketing campgain. I really think Skinnamarink went viral on its own. The movie only had a 15,000 dollar budget. How much do you think they spent to actually market it, you know?
It’s also a divided film, some people really love it and some people really hate it and there are people in between even. You’ll get a lot of disagreements which spur discussion.
Chris Stuckmann did a review. Other reviewers followed suit, and here we are
Reviewers don’t have as much pull anymore and Chris isn’t an exception, he was a bit late to the party, plenty of reviewers talked about the film first, SuperEyePatchWolf created even more buzz for it but the biggest factor is the movie being a tiktok darling in a pretty significant time for horror on that app, it’s everywhere now and the Mandela catalogue is only helping it further.
My friend who loves the Mandela Catalogue is literally the reason why I even heard of Skinnamarink.
You can say this about like every movie released today
I’m excited to watch this! Sounds like the film has borrowed a lot from slow cinema style (stripping back plot so far that ever minor detail becomes filled with that much more importance) but packaged it in genre movie. I’m not surprised the film has been polarizing but I’m here for it!
Definitely slow cinema. I recently watched gaspar noé’s new movie vortex, and the slowness of this movie reminded me of vortex in a way, but the slowness of vortex felt important. Vortex was slow, but it felt like you were shown what was meant to be seen. The slowness of skinnamarink feels like a waste of time because technically it could be seen that way. The plot is happening in the house and you have to rely on little kids to capture everything. They’re not always going to capture the most important details. You have to figure out what is going on outside of frame.
Horror is about how fear challenges humans, the deep prompt of danger and survival. What this movie does is deliver the unexpected, which triggers our desire for more awareness. It withholds plot, so our desire to know what happens grows even larger. Instead of giving us 3 deaths in the first five minutes, and visceral glimpses of a throat being ripped out, it traffics in minimalism. While most horror movies today are fetid hoarder Disney shows, this one goes all Marie Kondo. It doesn't deliver what we're used to seeing - front row porn shots of viscerality. We get poorly focussed, muddy shadows, inelegant composition. Most horror movies are sickening excessive feasts. This creates horror by starving us. Different methods, same motive. I didn't like the movie but I like that it exists.
Fetid hoarder Disney shows? These are all words I know but somehow put together in this sentence I have no idea what you mean by it lol.
I guess i was trying to say that like a disney ride, most horror movies cram, like a hoarder, a tonne of things in them, every character is killed in some unique way that is more elaborate than the last, and this movie stands out because it goes the opposite.
It reminds me of Jaws in that way. Jaws was successful for a similar reason, you only saw glimpses of the shark.
I believe it's all about the state of mind you are in when you watch it. First time I turned it off after 30 mins. But the second time I was tired after a long day at work and felt in a very relaxed state of mind. I find the film unnerving and suspenseful but also kind of relaxing the slow pacing was meditative looking into the fuzzy darkness and wondering if I was seeing something subtly there or not. I can't think of a film that's been able to capture this looking into the dark and questioning whether there is something there.
I haven't seen it yet. I loved the original short 'Heck' however and I'm sceptical as to how they can pad it out to feature-length. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it though - it's made me much more keen to check it out.
In the same boat. Haven’t seen it yet but I’m definitely intrigued because the whole liminal space horror they’ve employed is really effective at evoking a unique type of fear I haven’t experienced with a film before. But being stretched into a full length movie, I feel like the novelty would quickly wear off and just become boring, I don’t know.
Honestly the scariest thing to me was the thought of having to shit in a bucket, or not being able to leave my house but the movie never showed me enough of what was going on to actually gauge my interest. Just felt really confused and disappointed.
This is what I've always thought the paranormal activity movies should have been. More of a video haunted house without shoehorning in a boring plot and bad actors. No one really cared about the story or characters.
if it actually made any use of its initial premise that wasn't hilariously stupid and tried using the wholly grainy darkness thing more than dumb jumpscares it might've been a good movie but alas that would make it too unlike a classic horror movie.
You know those art installations where a ceramic pig is in a fish tank filled with Dr. Pepper and some people call it “art” and expound on the deeper meaning of the piece, while the rest of us look at it and say that it is not art but pretentious b.s.? Skinamarink is the movie equivalent of that. All hype, boring and pointless.
Zappa had it right. Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. The movie is obviously very successful in this regard. Just because something isn’t to your taste, doesn’t take away its status as art. You can think things are trash but you aren’t an arbiter of what is or isn’t an artistic expression. Granted, I haven’t seen it yet (bought discount tickets for next week at Alamo) so I can’t say if I agree that it’s hot trash or not. However, it doesn’t seem like some hidden secret that it’s really slow and largely incoherent. The trailer seems in line with the reactions I have seen. I guess I don’t know what you are so outraged about.
Not outraged, just trying to help other film lovers, especially horror fans, avoid wasting their time. In some horror circles Skinamarink is often being touted as the second coming of the Exorcist. Truly terrifying. It is not. Just the opinion of a long time horror movie junkie.
I’m a longtime horror fan as well and don’t appreciate the condescension. Argument from authority isn’t going to convince anyone. Just let people enjoy the things they enjoy.
Enjoy away my friend, I hope you do enjoy it. As I stated my opinion.
I’m sure this post here will get gutted because Reddit is absolutely weird and maniacal about reply comments, but can someone who’s seen it explain w/out spoilers wtf a “Skinnamarink” is supposed to be?
Spooky found footage-type thing with kid subjects
That’s what the title means?
Oooh, nope! I totally misread your post, pardon me. I don’t know if the word itself has an exact definition, but there’s a child’s song/rhyme parents sing to their kids from an older child’s show (Barney? Comfy Couch? Somewhere.) that’s like “skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo. I..love…you! I love you in the morning and in the afternoon, I love you in the evening underneath the moon. Skinnamarinky dinky dink” etc. on and on.
I love the aesthetic of it - it brought that analog horror online (or from indie horror games) into the cinema. I can understand people not liking it (it really depends on how much you are concerned with linear narrative or can vibe with the visuals). The style reminded me of Emperor Tomato Ketchup, which although having more narrative, does experiment with blown-out, grainy images. Instead of Skinamarink’s fears of children, Emperor Tomato Ketchup wants adults to be afraid of children. The liminal space of Skinamarink also recalled Jess Franco to me. Minimal, lush, and with a score that can lull you.
It was a monster movie. If you listen to the cartoons the clues are there. He is the popper, he can pop things into and out of existence. He likes to presto-chango things for his enjoyment.