Directed By Kyle Edward Ball

Starring – Jaime Hill, Lucas Paul, Ross Paul

The Plot – Two children (Lucas Paul and Dali Rose Tetreault) wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

This film is currently not rated

Skinamarink – Official Trailer [HD] | A Shudder Original – YouTube

POSITIVES

Never before has so much been emitted from so little. With a meager $15,000 budget at its disposal, Kyle Edward Ball has constructed a technical siesta of terrifying trepidation that not only sets the stage for the next evolutionary step in horror, but also with it the unlocking of our childhood subconscious of the nightmarish rendering of the many things that go bump in the night as a result of our imagination. Ball renders this effectively with deviation in his many technical elements, but primarily the immersive intricacies of the experimental sound designs and lucidly hypnotic entrancement of its corresponding visuals. The former maintains a static consistency that builds feverishly towards the building suspense and growing tension as each sequence builds to a cataclysmic Concierto, with vocal obstructions feeding all the more into the supernatural essence that haunts this film’s characters and the audience alike, and the latter uses some interesting aspects of framing, surveilling and color selections in the luminating glow from the film’s only light source, the family television set, that inscribes an ominous conjuring to the intentionally outdated concepts of the film’s aesthetic choices. All of these certainly help in cementing Ball as possibly the next big thing in horror, but for my money it’s his method of direction prolonging the interpretation that effectively triggers that rare feeling of uncertainty that has been missing from fictional cinema. This obviously leads to some carefully calculated frights in the jump scares department, earning them tastefully in ways that resonate effectively from the air of ambiguity that Ball constructs so cleverly and effortlessly, but equally it invokes a spell of hopelessness and helplessness that plague the mostly unidentifiable characters, while offering the barebones minimum of storytelling for the audience to piece together. On this quality, not everything reaches a satisfying embodiment, but there is something appreciative about a director who lets the audience define matters as whatever they truly want it to be, with the imaginative essence of our youths once more inspiring something tangible to the creative process in trying to assemble clarity in Ball’s many scattered pieces. In my interpretation, I see the film as being a metaphorical embodiment of child abuse and domestic violence, with the ambiguous entity in question referring to one or both parents whose familiarity goes missing by the film’s second act. It’s always been my opinion that the best kind of horror films are the meaningful ones conveying a deeper significance than the one fleshed out on a surface level, and “Skinamarink” is no exception to the rule in my investigating, tapping into a family conflict that unfortunately I myself was a part of in my youth, but one that could equally be the motivation for why I’m seeing it as such. Finally, while the ensemble is limited and as ambiguous as Ball can capably depict them, the vocal capacities primarily in the duo of child actors consistently triggered empathy towards the situation that wholeheartedly engulfed them. Each of them is steered towards delirium as a result of the uncertainty, but primarily in the case of Lucas Paul, there’s a depth in vulnerability that transcends the limitations of his experience (His first film), and considering he’s asked to carry the focus and corresponding narrative direction, this little boy remarkably dazzles among the best child horror performances of all time.

NEGATIVES

While “Skinamarink” is an overwhelming technical success that proves atmosphere is still the primary ingredient in constructing chills, the film isn’t without momentary hinderances that diminished the magnitude of its appeal, in turn creating for somewhat will be the distinguishing factor on if Ball’s nightmare fuel is worth the swig. For starters, the editing, whether intentional or not, is clumsily sloppy, obscuring what little exposition that we get with forceful intrusions cutting at what often feels like the wrong time. As previously indicated, the film’s visuals bare a surveillance style, studying an environment with many panning movements and angles that vividly illustrate matters with these tightly intimate frames, but the gimmick becomes tedious when dialogue has us locked into a certain scene dynamic, only to continuously betray our trust with these abrupt cuts that spontaneously cut into the engagement. I can forgive this element a lot easier if it wasn’t every single time, or even a majority of instances, but it stood as the only thing that broke my concentration to Ball’s impeccable direction, in turn serving as the obvious weak link to an otherwise perfect production. Beyond this, I found the climax and corresponding resolution of the film to underwhelm when held in tow to the extent of its continuous 90-minute build. As to where abrupt emphasis plagued the appeal of the movie’s many editing schemes, so too does a resolution that seems to come out of nowhere, undercutting the primary conflict during a scene that, for my money, could’ve used another ten minutes to further indulge us in the monster that have audibly stalked Kevin and Kaylee throughout the duration of the experience.

OVERALL
“Skinamarink” is that one in a million experience for horror that not only raises the stakes and cinematic quality to another level, but also unlocks with it a Rorschach test of evocative interpretation that could mean something different for everyone that indulges in it. With tangible technical elements feeding into Ball’s gripping direction, as well as the mystique of ambiguity haunting us with unattended vulnerability, the film is the perfect exclamation point on an extraordinary year for horror, and one that we won’t be able to shake for quite some time.

My Grade: 9/10 or A-