In Skinamarink, director Kyle Edward Ball offers an experimental riff on the haunted house story, an ambient and atmospheric experience that demands the audience’s full attention from the off. Comprised almost entirely of static shots of the interior of a family household, often framed from unconventional and almost uncanny angles (we see ceilings, banisters and skirting boards more than we see human figures), two young children wake in the middle of the night to find that their home appears to be erasing parts of itself from existence. As windows and doors disappear before their eyes, something also appears to be going on between Mom and Dad. Hushed whispers of dialogue between the siblings, Kaylee and Kyle, offer only vague hints about what might be unfolding, an early suggestion from the brother that he would rather not ‘talk about Mom’ being one of the few tangible scraps of information to suggest that all is not well within this household.
Frustrated but not necessarily frightened, the children attempt to escape from their immediate environment by camping out in front of the living room television, watching old cartoons from the early half of the 20th century (think rip-offs of Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’). The desire to continue on as if everything were normal, however, is quickly thwarted by the exponential rise of strange and seemingly paranormal happenings around the house, combined with the peculiar requests of the Mom and Dad, beckoning the children one by one to the master bedroom.
If all of this sounds as if Skinamarink plays out as a family-oriented ghost story in the same vein as The Shining or Poltergeist, then it is worth signposting that the above synopsis aims to offer as basic a sense as possible of a film that is deliberately enigmatic and unclear. I use unclear both in a thematic sense, but also in reference to the film’s literal visual quality. A title card at the beginning of the film informs us that this is 1995, and the grainy often washed-out cinematography of the film suggests a type of home video VHS footage circa The Blair Witch Project. Indeed, that infamous found footage film is an evident inspiration, with Skinamarink borrowing heavily from the Blair Witch’s iconic if frustrating final shot. As the film progresses and the lights of the house become dimmer and dimmer, we are often left to make sense of imagery that is often little more than grainy static and noise, a visual cacophony that invites us to read every glimmer, shadow, and suggestion of movement as something sinister lurking just beyond the camera’s ability.
Without giving too much away, the film trains you to read particular images, sounds, and elements of mise-en-scene for very specific purposes, asking its audience to actively participate in the puzzle box experience it offers. Skinamarink prompts more questions than it is prepared (or even wants) to answer. This is horror filtered through the often surrealist and symbolic image-making of David Lynch than it is anything else. As the latter half of the film unfolds, I slowly began to read it as a commentary upon childhood trauma and domestic abuse (again, hinting toward The Shining as a point of reference), although the opening credits’ almost suspiciously prominent disclaimer that it was filmed with respect to Covid-19 precautions allows for a reading of the film which foregrounds the pandemic and its consequent ‘stay-at-home’ lockdowns as a potential mirror to the text: the family forced inside a household from which they cannot leave or, indeed, escape.
Anyone wanting definitive answers from Skinamarink will be left disappointed, and despite a modest number of jump scares I would be hard-pressed to suggest this to anyone looking for a more conventional horror flick for movie night. Give it your full attention in a dark room with no distractions and an open-mindedness to the director’s experimental approach to film form and horror iconography, however, and Skinamarink becomes a refreshingly innovative beast that at its best left me grasping the armrests of my seat as I navigated its dollhouse setting-turned-nightmare.
Notes from the Multiplex 