Since its release in 1999, The Blair Witch Project has been quietly insinuating itself into the canon of horror movie “must-sees” — not because it’s a good film by any means, but because it’s an innovative one. At least, innovative by late 20th-century standards.
Despite the insufferably daft cast of characters and exhaustive reliance on spooky noises in the woods to generate suspense, I can’t deny that Blair Witch pioneered a type of filmmaking that has now become a mainstay in the world of horror: found footage. Up until that point, no major blockbuster (at least that I know of) intentionally embraced the amateurish aesthetic of a homemade video to fabricate a sense of authenticity in the narrative. No dolly shots, no studio lighting, no eerie soundtrack to amplify the audience’s fear… directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick wanted none of that. Instead, they wanted their movie to be sloppy, raw, and unabashedly crude. And that’s what made it scary to movie-goers that went to see it in 1999.
In fact, the technique worked so well that some people thought The Blair Witch Project was a real documentary, and that the terrifying events that were captured on camera actually happened to actual people (Seasoned Malevolent Dark readers may already be aware of this, or perhaps even experienced the Blair Witch pandemonium themselves, but you must keep in mind that this movie was released before I was born).
But enough about Blair Witch — let’s talk about Skinamarink. This divisive 2022 indie horror flick takes the inherent authenticity “found footage” films can produce and amplifies it tenfold. The plot loosely follows two young children (Kaylee and Kevin) searching for their father, who has mysteriously vanished in the middle of the night. Not only that, but all the windows and doors in their home seemed to have also inexplicably disappeared. The next 100 minutes details their infuriatingly placid investigation into why all this happened in the first place.
The Controversy
A part of me recognizes the hypocrisy of praising Skinamarink for all the same reasons I can’t stand Blair Witch: it’s an excruciatingly slow burn with a five-minute payoff, each scene is some slightly-different iteration of the previous one, you can barely hear anybody clearly and the characters aren’t developed enough to care about what happens to them in the end. But for some reason it just works.
Admittedly I’m in the minority for thinking this way; this movie received generally poor reception and its Letterboxd review curve is wildly erratic; the amount of users who rated it 0.5 and 5 stars only differs by a slim 2% (7% and 9%, respectively). It seems like people were either completely enraptured or deep into R.E.M. sleep before they hit the thirty-minute mark. But as someone who had to turn on every single light in their home upon finishing this movie, I truly believe Skinamarink is far from a snoozefest; it’s an anxiety-inducing, unpredictable plunge into the liminal and demonic that makes “the dark” — that ubiquitous monster we were all afraid of as kids — feel like a seriously insidious villain.
Seeing Things That Aren’t There
Have you ever looked around a pitch-black room and conjured images of things that don’t exist? This is more than mistaking a hat on a coat rack for Slenderman; I’m talking about seeing faces or shapes in the distance when there’s quite literally nothing to look at because it’s too dark to see your own hand right in front of you. I imagine this preponderance is related to our brain’s natural penchant for finding order in the chaos, for filling in the blanks to make sense of a situation we only partially understand.
Skinamarink weaponizes this tendency. The poor lighting produces an intensely grainy quality in the cameras, which makes it all-too easy to spot invisible abnormalities in the frame. Combined with the painstakingly snailish pace of the film, you find yourself perpetually on edge, waiting for a jumpscare that may or may not ever happen. This is only augmented when scenes drag on for way too long. While I was watching this movie I found myself thinking “surely something’s going to happen any second now… we’ve been staring at the same still frame of an open closet door for over five minutes. Why would the camera still be showing me this if a monster wasn’t going to pop out?”
The brilliance of this setup is that occasionally there is a payoff (i.e., a creepy face suddenly appears) but most often than not, nothing happens. But as the tension mounts just enough unpredictable action occurs to keep you invested but not so much that you start expecting a jumpscare or frightening interaction every time the camera starts to linger. The whole movie is one giant tease, all the way up until the end (no spoilers here!)
Something Wicked This Way Comes
As I mentioned before, the “monster” of this film is pretty elusive. Its motives are not completely known to us other than its desire to manipulate the children into performing self-mutilation (one notorious scene — and I believe the only one with intelligible dialogue from the demon — is when it tells the little boy, Kevin, to put a kitchen knife in his eye).
And the fact that we never see the entity’s true form (only temporarily manifesting as one of those bug-eyed plastic phone toys) makes the entire movie murky, confusing, and perhaps even meaningless. Is the father disappearing a metaphor for child neglect? Do the missing windows and doors represent depression? Is it an allegory for purgatory? Is any of this happening to the children or is it just a collective nightmare they’re having?
I don’t know. And I think that’s the point. The nebulous nature of the monster makes Skinamarink more sinister because it acts as a stand-in for whatever symbolism (or lack thereof) you want to ascribe to it.
And speaking of sinister — another thing worth noting is the juxtaposition of corruption and innocence at play throughout the film. Kaylee’s mouth and eyes are stolen after pleading for her parents instead of obeying the entity’s commands, effectively turning her into a vegetable. Kevin later blinds himself with the aforementioned knife because the monster tells him to (and perhaps out of fear of a similar punishment). He then tries to call 911 but is met with an illusory voice; the monster tricked Kevin by pretending to be the emergency operator.
And at the end of the movie we remain stuck on this incredibly long, upside-down static shot of a hallway. The camera slowly recedes backwards, revealing a mountainous heap of children’s toys on the floor (ceiling), suggesting that Kaylee and Kevin are not first victims this entity has tormented — in fact, they’re far from it. As the hallway elongates, an even blacker darkness creeps in until we are almost completely consumed by it.
After what feels like an eon and a half, an ephemeral flash of the entity’s face appears on screen for one final jump-scare. And just like the creature from The Blair Witch Project, it is over too quickly for the viewer to fully process what they saw.
Skinamarink (2022) - Mess or Masterpiece (Spoilers) - Malevolentdark
Director: Kyle Edward Ball
Date Created: 1970-01-01 00:33
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