“oh my GOD skinamarink. maybe one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen? I will not emotionally recover from this”

When I read that tweet from Stranger Things star Shannon Purser, I had to investigate. The film my inquiry led me to is the scariest of 2022 I’ve seen. It is a pure horror film. It doesn’t explore cultural issues like Nope or play with genre tropes like Barbarian. Skinamarink has only one intention, to scare you and my god does it succeed.

Kyle Edward Ball’s directorial debut is an experimental horror set in 1995 where two children wake up to see that their father is missing and all the doors and windows in the house are disappearing.

Skinmarink’s cinematography and sound design are the stars of the show. It’s plot and characters are up for interpretation as they don’t get much focus. It’s style over substance but in a really good way.

There are many arthouse horror films that’ve been described as being like a nightmare, Eraserhead being a good example. In my experience, what that phrase tends to mean is that the film has a lot of random scary images. Skinamarink is the only exception I’ve encountered. The film feels like a child’s worst nightmare where there are creepy noises, strange voices, inexplicable events and no grown ups to provide protection.

The film has a cheap, digitally hazy look. The quality is like that of a home movie from the late 90s’ or early 2000s but shot in the dark. Everything is illuminated by TV screens and light fittings. All we see of our characters are their feet, legs and silhouettes. We never see their faces. We hear their dialogue, it’s subtitled whenever it’s too distant to hear, not spoken properly (our young protagonists are pre-schoolers) or doesn’t sound entirely human.

It’s a bizarre style that you never really get used to, which makes watching it more tense. You’re never certain of what you’re seeing, what the children are doing, how much time has passed. This is where the film is very much like a nightmare as, just as you would struggle to recall a dream, you struggle to piece together what’s actually happening.

The father disappears, the doors and windows disappear and then mysterious voices start calling out to the children.

For me, this is where Skinamarink was like watching Paranormal Activity or The Blair Witch Project for the first time. There were many moments where I had my hands over my mouth and fighting the urge to cover my eyes. You know that something inhuman and incorporeal is in the house, targeting these children. You’re never certain of what it is or what it’ll do but you know when you’re in its presence and that’s an unbearable feeling.

What does the title mean? What does the story say? What does it bring to the horror genre? A new style of film-making for certain. Skinamarink looks and feels like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s substance is as difficult to determine as any other art film’s but it’s presentation makes it a gleaming standout of last year’s horror and a must-see for this year’s Halloween in my opinion.

Especially if you’re a horror fan anyway. If you’re not and you value a good night’s sleep, avoid it for your own health.

I give Skinamarink a spectacular 8 out of 10.