"Skinamarink" - A nightmare caught on camera

Josh
Jul 16, 2024
6 min read

Updated: Aug 10, 2024

Dir. Kyle Ball (2023)

I think we're in hell.

Everyone wants to be a child again. To relive the days of a bygone era, looked back on so fondly. Well, for most of us. Skinamarink, named after the children's nursery rhyme although spelt slightly differently to avoid kids finding it (so thanks I guess), explores the side of being a child that most of you forgot. The fear of monsters in the closet. The feeling of seeing faces in the dark forged by our young overactive imaginations only protected by the dull glow of a nightlight. Never have I felt the feeling of helplessness after watching a movie before. Although, the film itself isn't very intense. In fact, you don't even see much of the horror at all as the camera shy's away from the scares like a child who's watching something they shouldn't be.

This is what horror is about. Making you feel like a scared child again. A child who has just woken from a bad dream who is too scared to leave the bed. A child who is left wondering how a pile of their dirty clothes morphs into a silhouetted man once the lights turn out. Director Kyle Ball managed to capture this feeling on film in a unique way, recreating the terror felt when faced with monsters both imagined and the ones we once lived with.

I'm about 4 years (as of writing) too late with this review. But here's a quick breakdown of how Skinamarink came to be and how it blew up online. If you were on Tik-Tok between the years of our Lord 2022 - 2023, there is a high chance you would've seen all the hoopla and hype around Skinamarink. With most of the conversations involving the phrase 'scariest movie of the year' or 'scariest movie ever made'. With a brilliant cryptic trailer that perfectly set the slow mood within the 70s atheistic. Needless to say, hearing 'In this house' on repeat, I was hooked.

Skinamarink made its rounds through the yearly festivals, although while screening at Fantasia Film Fest a copy of the movie had leaked online. While a nightmare for larger studios, the leak worked to help market the movie to a wider audience. This accidental virality turned it into a modern day Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. Word of mouth travelled fast online and the film had become a horror success. On a modest budget of $15,000 and show within his Canadian family home, Ball saw a whopping return of over $2 million.

Before Skinamarink, Ball was making small experimental horror films on his YouTube channel where he would create shorts based on commenters' dreams. He then dropped his 30 minute short film Heck, which acts like a proof of concept following a similar plot with the unconventional presentation and protagonist motivation. Bringing analogue horror to the mainstream.

With all the introductions out the way, let's breakdown the plot (trust me, it won't take long) and discuss what made Skinamarink so scary.

The plot for Skinamarink is thin but conceptually interesting. We follow two protagonists, Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), who after an incident with Kevin falling down the stairs while playing with someone or something late at night, find their family home without parents or exterior windows and doors. Frightened, the two siblings seek refuge in front of their TV watching cartoons with the TV acting as their main source of light and comfort. As the movie progresses, more strange occurrences happen with chairs hanging from the roof, toys floating in mid air or getting stuck to a wall and disembodied voices luring the children around the house.

There's a few key standout moments of horror, where Kaylee gets lured upstairs where should see figures that are imitating her parents only to have her Mum transform into something off-screen. Kevin is told to go down into the basement where he finds Kaylee missing her face after not doing as she was told. And most horrifically, the entity in the house wants to play a game with Kevin where he's commanded to stick a knife in his eye.

This all builds up to Kevin being told to go up stairs where he walks through a flipped upside down version of his house. We cycle through alternate abstract rooms of the house, where we hear screams of Kevin followed by blood splatter and laughter only to have it reverse back to normal, play again and loop. Text appears on the screen saying '572 Days'. As I write this, every creak the house makes puts me on edge. The movie comes to a close where we see peoples faces within photographs fade into a blur, what looks to be mother from the scene with Kaylee sitting on the bed and fading out of reality. Where the movie concludes with a dark room covered with film grain, something we've seen for about 80% of the movie always wondering is there something amongst the grain, where we finally see someone emerge from it. Faceless and pale. Kevin asks who they are and cuts to black.

The movie presents in a rather abstract way, holding back a lot of information and visuals leaving the audience to fill in the gaps of the black grainy void. And the internet has been searching for meaning behind the movie where numerous theories from literal demons, divorce, to being stuck in hell (which seems rather plausible due to Ball's previous film 'Heck') and one of the more popular explanations being Kevin is in a coma. You can take away whatever you want from this movie but I believe the horror comes from the people who occupy the house. The horror of child abuse, specifically from the Mother. Let me break it down.

Starting with Kevin falling down the stairs. Kevin is seen in the middle of the night talking to someone as if getting ready to play a game only to then fall down the stairs waking up the rest of the family. For those who aren't there to witness the event, it comes across like an accident with the excuse of sleepwalking given by the sister. This came across to me as a form of domestic violence covered by a mundane reason for the injuries.

Upon coming from the hospital, the Father can be heard speaking to someone on the phone explaining Kevin's injuries. At this point the Mother isn't in the picture. Kevin and Kaylee soon wake up to find themselves in an empty house with all their windows vanished. They are now trapped in their home. A place they should feel safe and loved, now a place of terror and fear. The children take comfort in each other's company, Legos and cartoons, during which Kevin asks several times about missing their parents. Where Kaylee responds that she 'doesn't want to talk about Mum." Alluding to negative feelings with the parent or at least a sense of relief that she's gone and she doesn't need to be thought about again.

When Kaylee gets called upstairs by the voice. She confronts her Father but he disappears and is replaced with the Mother. Like after a family fight, her Mother tells Kaylee, 'We love you very much." The Mother then enters the closet where you hear bones cracking and groaning, ending the scene with an inhuman arm reaching around the closet. The mother tells the child that she's loved, that she can be trusted only to then, on a whim, turn into the monster she really is. Like a parent putting on a mask to hide who they truly are.

Skinamarink doesn't shy away from less metaphorical violence towards children. You have the voice pushing him towards self harm as well as severally hurting Kevin on loop, set to the same music as a glitching looping cartoon foreshadowed earlier in the movie. Tragically Kevin does manage to call the police. Getting through the other line you hear the operator question the child in confusion after hearing him explain that he's hurt and bleeding but cannot leave the home. We are then left with 3 numbers on screen, 527 days, just over a year and half. A year and half of abuse.

The film ends with once normal family photographs fading into a blur. Followed by a shot of his Mother slowly fading out of existence, indicating that he doesn't have a family anymore. Whatever resemblance of a family Kevin once had is gone. All he is left is a faceless being that Kevin doesn't even recognise anymore asking the being, "Who are you?" Kevin isn't with a parent anymore, but a monster that pretends to be one.

As much as I really like Skinamarink, it is hard to recommend to people. With its unconventional albeit fascinating cinematography where the heavy film grain trick the brain to see things in the dark. A story that takes a back seat to the experience where Kyle Ball manages to create a nightmare unfold in front of you while leaving a lot up for interpretation for the audience. Although, I would recommend it to horror fans looking for something out of the box.