Quintessential Nightmare Movie

 SKINAMARINK (2022)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It has been a long time since a film truly terrified me to such a degree that I had to cover my eyes and step away from the screen at arm's length. There is one moment where the scratchiness on the soundtrack gets louder and louder, so much so that I had to put the volume down. Yes, I know people aren't so easily scared nowadays unless something is a gorefest but I will say that of this millennium since the year 2000, "Skinamarink" is doubtlessly the scariest film I have seen. It left me completely uneasy and my nerves were shot to such an extent that I had trouble calming down. Well, it took me ten minutes to calm down.

The best approach to viewing "Skinamarink" is to understand it is an exercise in terror. It is about exploiting the childhood fears of being in the dark, of not seeing or seeing something that you can't understand or fathom. Set in 1995, there are young siblings, a brother and sister, and they walk around in their pajamas. The brother, Kevin, has an unnamed injury due to sleepwalking. The father takes him to the hospital and brings him back home. Kaylee is the sister and both siblings start hearing thumping noises. Toilets and other objects and furniture pieces disappear and reappear. They watch cartoons in the living room yet the hallways lights do not turn on. Mom is sitting on the bed with her back to Kevin. Dad informs Kevin to look under the bed but nothing is there. Is this house haunted or is Kevin having a fever dream? Kaylee also disappears, and Mom might be missing her...oh, I shan't say. 

"Skinamarink" is not just an unrelenting horror film - it is shot either at low angles or high angles or somewhere in between to the point that Mom or Dad or the kids are never seen in profile. They are almost always shot below the waist or we just see their feet. We see much of the TV showing cartoons (sometimes the toons freeze and repeat their previous actions), and we see various shots of dozens of Lego pieces and that most terrifying toy (well, it was for me when I was a tot in the 1970's) and that would be the Chatter Telephone. Some moments recall "The Shining" with the use of one particular subtitle ("572 days") that scared me almost as much as anything else. Never mind the long hallway of isolated Legos (I have no interest getting near those toys again). 

"Skinamarink" looks like a recently uncovered lost film shot in grainy, colorless footage (as if it was shot with a Fisher Price camera) with various dust prints and a scratchiness in the soundtrack that may grate your nerves at first until you get used to. This is not a normal horror film and sometimes you don't know what is hidden in the darkness, or which room in this house feels safe. This is a visual representation of the most basic childhood nightmares and fears - the nagging feeling that something is in the dark that could hurt you, and that awfully agonizing feeling that Mom and Dad are not what they seem and might not protect you. "Skinamarink" is the quintessential nightmare movie.