Skinamarink Preys on Your Worst Childhood Nightmares

When I was in high school, toward the end of a long hiking trip, I stood at the edge of what was meant to be one of the highlights of the trip—a towering precipice standing almost half a mile above the valley below. When we finished our climb and looked out over the landscape, however, we saw—nothing. A dense, gray mist had settled around us, preventing us from seeing even a foot beyond the cliff’s edge. The feeling this mist elicited in me is indescribable. While I could see nothing, or rather, though I knew that nothing was hidden in the fog, save for the vast emptiness that filled the space between myself and the valley floor, I couldn’t help being disquieted by the feeling, deep in the pit of my stomach, that mortal danger lurked just behind the veil. It was as if my brain, unable to fathom the enormous chasm that stretched invisibly before me, conjured a monster sufficient to make sense of the vertiginous sensations dancing in my inner ear. It’s this same confused, contradictory feeling that Kyle Edward Ball has successfully exploited in his debut micro-budget horror film, Skinamarink.

While I don’t believe that Skinamarink has the type of plot that can be “spoiled,” I will warn you that I’ll be discussing the plot (to the extent that it exists) in relative detail. The film takes place in 1995, in the home of four-year-old siblings, Kevin and Kaylee, who awaken in the middle of the night to find themselves left home alone, the doors and windows having mysteriously disappeared. The pair decide to wait the mystery out, building a base camp in front of the living room TV as only children could do. The longer they wait, however, the more apparent it becomes that there’s another presence in the house that wants to be heard.

Experimental Horror

Skinamarink makes its statement early—the opening shots are dominated by extreme camera angles, crunchy, muffled foley work, and walls. In fact, much of the film is spent looking at walls, ceilings, doorways—the children hardly ever appear in frame; their faces never do. The film experiments with technique in a number of ways, but most noticeable is Ball’s and cinematographer Jamie McRae’s inventive framing. As mentioned, the film makes heavy use of extreme angles and tight, open frames, often showing only small portions of what we might expect to see. Not only does this keep the characters abstracted from the audience, much as the people who fill our own dreams and nightmares can at once be familiar and unfamiliar to us, but it forces us to engage, constantly filling in the gaps. The effect extends beyond the children, too. Not once in the film do we see a moving object being acted upon. No human hand moves a doll or Lego or blanket. Nor do we necessarily see these things move on their own. The only time an object moves in Skinamarink is from outside the confines of the camera’s frame. It’s a deliberate choice that certainly lends itself to the lo-fi nature of the film, but also lends itself to the maddening uncertainty of it all. There is no sanctuary or refuge in this house, not even the Lego sets sitting securely in the flickering glow of the television screen.

Where to watch Skinamarink:

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The film also owes a large part of its effectiveness to Ball’s editing. Every shot seems to go on a beat too long. It’s disconcerting, knowing that if we’re lingering on a shot, there must be a reason, until we move on and the same thing happens again. The feeling is exacerbated by the thick overlays of film grain, making the whole movie look as if it were shot on 16mm film. Lights and darks are sharply contrasted, marking the line between safety and danger—a line that seems to shift at random, as nightlights become unplugged or light switches flick off before either child enters the room. The two take these terrors in stride, though, perhaps leaning heavily on the presence and support of the other. For Kevin and Kaylee, their circumstances, while frightening, will all turn out to be okay because they always have.

In response to the unshakeable support the children have for each other, a primary goal of the Other One (as I’ll call it, the voice is uncredited) seems to be to separate the children. In one of the film’s first scenes of serious tension, Kaylee is called upstairs, giving viewers a rare bit of camera movement as we walk along with Kaylee to her parents’ bedroom. Inside, Kaylee’s father sits motionless on the bed, facing the wall, where he instructs Kaylee to look under the bed. Not long after, her mother will ask her to close her eyes. Neither demand sounded like a good idea to anybody at my screening, but the scene becomes pivotal to dissecting both plot and the motives of the Other One. Here, too, the shots last longer than expected, the stillness of the figures forces them to eerily blend into the background, emphasizing the inky blacks threatening to envelop them. The grainy effects force your eyes to question whether something sinister is moving slowly through the darkness or whether it was just an artifact—a strategy that’s also used notably well in one of my all-time favorites, Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo. Both films use a combination of darkness and the perceived limitations of technology to draw viewers deeper into their respective film worlds, and it’s exciting to see Skinamarink make such great use of it. 

Skinamarink, for whatever reason, is able to somehow tap into the deepest recesses of fear. Perhaps you are a parent who dreads the thought of your child being left alone. Or maybe you remember the sinking feeling you had as a child the first time you lost sight of your mom or dad at the store or in the park. Maybe you recall standing at the top of the basement stairs, silently counting to yourself the number of steps it would take before you could reach the light bulb’s pull string. It capitalizes on the instinctual dread we feel as we stare into the yawning abyss just inside the mist. The fact that in the few short hours since the film’s release, I’ve already heard a dozen possible explanations of the story from different people is a testament to the impact the film is already having on audiences. That such buzz could come from a film so outside the comfort zone of casual viewers is further evidence of the lightning in a bottle that Kyle Edward Ball has managed to capture. If nothing else, it sets a strong pace early in an already exciting year in horror. In a time of deep concerns about the future of filmmaking and the deafening lament about creative homogeneity, here is a film that deserves all of our support.

You can support What Sleeps Beneath and physical media (!) by ordering Skinamarink on Blu-Ray using our affiliate link with Movies Unlimited!

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Article written by Ande Thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.

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