I saw Skinamarink on a cold Friday the 13th night. On my way to the theater, I called up an old friend. I told him what little I knew about the film I was about to see. He told me about managing his house full of six kids.
“It’s so loud all the time,” he said. “But it’s when things go silent that you know some serious shit has happened.” This thought stuck with me during the movie. The movie stuck with me long after.
Skinamarink is as divisive of a movie as you can imagine. It doesn’t really contain much of a plot in a traditional sense. Two kids — around four years in age — awake to find their parents are vanishing, along with all the exterior doors and windows to their house. And for much of the movie, you’re simply left to experience this strange new isolation with these kids.
The film isn’t traditionally shot. You rarely see anyone’s face — and when you do, you wish you didn’t. Instead the aggressively grainy shots linger on hallways, ceilings, glowing TV screens, and sometimes just pure darkness. But thanks to the granular nature of the footage, writer/director Kyle Edward Ball is able to recreate that childhood sense of staring into the darkness at bedtime and swearing you can see someone or something hidden within.
Sound also plays a major role in Skinamarink’s ability to build its own very unique atmosphere. Dialogue is often delivered as if in an ASMR video. It’s all very quiet and close to the mic. In the background, the film is soundtracked by continuously running old cartoon episodes playing on the television, which for the children has become a nightlight, a security blanket, and a relief from the terrifying circumstances in which they find themselves.
Skinamarink shares a lot of similarities with Harlan Ellison’s classic short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” The film reveals that the children are being tortured by some omnipotent entity who appears most often as a low, guttural voice in the darkness, which freely admits it can “do anything.”
It’s difficult to recommend a film like Skinamarink because it is so different from anything you’re likely to see. During the screening I attended, at least two people walked out halfway through. This isn’t a movie for everyone. But that’s partly why I’ve still been thinking about it in the days since I saw it.
Skinamarink left me checking behind shower curtains and leaving on the hallway lights. I kept thinking about those two children, lit only by the glow of a television, freezing after a loud crash in the darkness rearranges their world once again.
It’s in these moments — as you gaze into a haze of the morphing black static and hear only the crackle of the audio — that you remember the terrifying silence.
