Review: ‘SKINAMARINK’ suffocates with dread-filled darkness

I am afraid of the dark. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve found the pitch black of night to be a bottomless pit of horrifying possibilities. What lurks beyond the meeting place between light and dark is unfathomable. It terrifies me. And the dead silence only exacerbates my fears. It’s not enough that I suffer from sleep paralysis from time to time, but to feel darkness seep into my chest is a ghastly experience. That’s why I sleep with the TV on. In Kyle Edward Ball’s directorial feature debut, SKINAMARINK, the filmmaker takes these sinister imaginings to create a dread-filled wonderland, worming its way into the bone marrow. While there is very little plot, a sticking point for many viewers, SKINAMARINK makes up for in creepy-crawly imagery that blankets you like a bitter winter cold. You can’t shake it, and by the last 30 minutes, you pray for it to be over.

What transpires through the film is quite simple. Two kids, Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), find themselves home alone. Their father has disappeared into thin air, and all the windows and doors have vanished. The night settles around them like dust, the granular quality of the filmmaking giving it a retro, hypnotic feel. The crackling of the camera mingles with the static on the TV set. When deciding it best to sleep downstairs, Kevin and Kaylee flip on some cartoons and nestle in for the night. But the darkness won’t let them sleep. A disembodied voice beckons them from the hallway, teasing them to “come upstairs” and “look under the bed.” Those words have never been more horrifying.

Ball strategically uses dizzying and severe camera angles, often pointed at random corners or kept low to the ground, to impart the claustrophobic nature of nighttime. His film work plays a vital role in building the suspense of what is coming around the very next corner. The darkness is fuzzy, suffocating, and overwhelming. The few jump scares are brilliantly placed and never overstay their welcome, inviting the viewer to anticipate the next soul-rattling moment, even if nothing happens. It’s the breath you hold as you wait for eyes to pop through the dark or the voice to reemerge even more disturbing and sadistic than before.

Much like what we’ve experienced the last three years, time means absolutely nothing when it’s time that strikes the most fear and traps you in its grip. SKINAMARINK drags the audience over the carpet and into an endless abyss of imagination. It’s the recesses in which Ball plays that makes it a wholly effective chiller. You’ve got nothing but time to sit in the darkness and let your mind go wild. As the voice creeps closer, telling Kevin and Kaylee to do unimaginable things, you can feel the hairs raise on the back of your neck. Maybe the voice whispers into your ear, too.

SKINAMARINK is a vessel for the brain’s most frightening hallucinations. It’s not about what you actually see but what could be there. Nothing but darkness fills the screen. While nothing actually happens, it’s the consideration that your mind tricks you into believing that your worst nightmares have come to life. In the stillness, there is great terror. Ball’s debut is the sort of indie feature that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, yet the filmmaking’s mood and atmosphere make it one unsettling experience.

SKINAMARINK hits theaters on Friday (January 13) and comes to Shudder sometime later this year.

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