"Skinamarink" review: Truly experimental, palpably scary

 

“Skinamarink,” 2023, directed by Kyle Edward Ball

★★★★½

It’s no surprise that “Skinamarink” director Kyle Edward Ball got his start on the internet. On his YouTube channel, Bitesized Nightmares, Ball visualizes viewer-submitted bad dreams in under ten minutes with minimal dialogue, practical effects, and a hazy, retro aesthetic that seamlessly conceals his low budget. Not unlike Jane Shoenbrun’s 2021 film “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” , Ball understands how to get under the audience’s skin in a way only comparable to the fear experienced exploring the depths of the internet late at night. “Skinamarink” expounds on these methods and ideas greatly in Ball’s feature film debut, elongating the structure he honed making online shorts to 100 minutes. At first this length can feel excessive, with uneventful and purely static moments overstaying their welcome. But as the terror starts to mount, the intentionally patient atmosphere feels worthwhile. Ball sometimes undermines the tension with cheap-feeling flashes of loud noises and bright lights, but the nostalgic, nightmarish aura of the film’s environments and mood are so unique and effectively haunting it’s easy to forgive the cutting of corners. It’s hard to pinpoint just what makes “Skinamarink” so gripping despite its minimalism, and it’s perhaps for that reason that it is an experimental triumph and an exciting step for the medium.

The film’s story, or at least what semblance of a story there is, begins with two children, Kevin and Kaylee (Lucas Paul and Dali Rose Tetrault), being put to bed by their parents (Jaime Hill and Ross Paul). This is shown only peripherally, with odd angles and low-key lighting concealing characters’ faces, and their voices being muffled and often subtitled. Soon after the lights are turned off, the brother and sister find themselves unable to sleep, and subsequently discover their parents to be mysteriously missing. All of this is presented in the same vague, intentionally cryptic way, the motionless camera positioned towards dark corners rather than the child actors’ performances. Heavy white noise that recalls found-footage predecessors like “The Blair Witch Project”, as well as minimal music outside of the diegetic soundtrack of the cartoons the children watch on their boxy, 90s-era TV help build the tension as they wander the house throughout the night. Windows and doors begin to mysteriously disappear, though the pressure really starts to mount when Kaylee goes upstairs to investigate the parents’ bedroom. There, she finds what appears to be the silhouette of her father, only seen from the waist down, sitting on the bed. It’s already a mesmerizingly eerie moment, made even more so by the father’s voice; “look under the bed”, he whispers.

What follows is another hour of fraught and very blue ambience, drenched in surprisingly convincing artificial film grain and increasingly confusing environmental geometry. As the last of the plot disappears, the film somehow becomes even more terrifying, taunting the audience with children’s toys and echoey, disembodied voices. Eventually Ball also introduces matte paintings that orient scenes in unnaturally spacious environments, but always holds back enough from both showing and telling the viewer what exactly is happening. This restraint is ultimately what sets “Skinamarink” apart from the usual “creepypasta” short films one might run across online, which often feel the need to over-explain the origin and abilities of their antagonists. Ball instead opts for a more nebulous evil force that seems to occupy every unlit portion of the screen. He begs for rewatches and analysis, especially in a moment when text reading “527 days” inexplicably appears in the center of the frame, but never shows his hand enough for his imagery to have any precise meaning outside of subjective experience. It’s a difficult line to toe, and few films, especially ones made on this small of a scale, are able to do it as successfully as “Skinamarink” does.

Low-budget horror that relies so heavily on the endurance of the audience is always going to be divisive, but is rarely as outstandingly scary as this. The fact that “Skinamarink” isn’t a complete bore is a milestone in itself, but the way Ball was able to construct something so dramatically layered, as well as get a film like this distributed nationally, is truly extraordinary. It’s the type of film that requires you to accept it on its own terms, but if you can get enveloped in its shadowy dread, as “Skinamarink” beckons you to, it will be hard to forget.