Skinamarink: Looking too hard into the evil gloom

It took me a while to get to Skinimarink, partly because it was never easily available anywhere near me, but also because it sounded truly unsettling in a way I knew I would find hard-going, even if it proved to be ultimately rewarding. 

This certainly turned out to be the case when I watched it last week. It gave me horrendous nightmares and genuine fears. I could only watch it for 20 minutes at a time, because the only time I could watch it was late at night, and houses full of sleeping people make all sorts of weird noises in the dark, and it was really fucking freaky.

I'm still not sure what actually happens in that movie, mainly because it's very busy breaking all the rules of film grammar to get across a deeply creepy vibe. It gave me the metaphysical shits to watch these glimpses of kids going through hell in their darkened home, and the film's refusal to adhere to the normal rules of film-making just made it all the more unsettling.

This is, to be clear, a good thing. I told the wife about how anxious it made me to watch this movie, and she really didn't understand why I'd voluntarily do that to myself. But the more abstract the film got, the more intriguing it felt. When so many other films insist on spoon-feeding the audience with the easiest-to-digest slop, something as baffling as this movie feels properly invigorating.

I could not anticipate where it was going to go, and would stare into the grainy darkness of a blackened doorway with way too much intensity. I could hardly bear the fear in the children's' voices calling for help, and the way the story is told through sound design is vital.

I can't recommend this film to anybody else, because it's easy to see why it drove some viewers crazy, but I can eat this kind of awesomely disturbing cinematic meal all day long.