While M3GAN dominates the box office for its more populist horror sensibilities, a more daring and peculiar horror movie is about to be unleashed on the masses. Already capturing a reputation after its film festival run in 2022, director Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink is the latest horror film to go viral. And it’s all because, unlike most recent horror, it’s actually freaking people out. But Skinamarink isn’t just giving people nightmares, it’s dropping them in the middle of one.
In theaters this weekend ahead of a streaming premiere on Shudder later in the year, the film is set late at night in a family home. With only a living room television illuminating the house, we watch as young siblings Kevin and Kaylee discover that their father has suddenly vanished. Throughout the night, the home’s doors and windows begin to disappear, trapping the children in the house while a terrifying presence lurks in the dark.
The way Skinamarink is shot and assembled maximizes its inescapable dread, with grainy visuals and a dream logic that defies reality. Dialogue isn’t always discernible, the home is shot at harsh angles to obscure the action, and time itself seems to pass irregularly. It’s a compelling but unabashed artifice, drawing slightly on 1970s grindhouse grunge, but its night of fright feels entirely real.
The film aims for the darker recesses of our subconscious and catches us where we are most vulnerable in ways that few horror films do. Its terror lies in what might be on the other side of a darkened doorway, or that creepy sound we think we heard coming from the other room, tapping into the audience’s ingrained fears to visceral effect. Ball’s ability to thrust us into a dreamworld is never less than alarming, marking him as perhaps one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in the genre in many moons.
Skinamarink is less inclined to give you sudden jumps and shocks than it is to burrow deeply under your skin and stay there. It’s abstract but accessible—it looks and sounds like nightmares we all have had, drawing on our compulsion to look under the bed or check on that foreboding sound coming from the basement despite the voice in our heading telling us not to. Even if the film’s somewhat plotless nature can be challenging, Skinamarink works because it summons the most primal of fears that everyone has.
The film’s arrival follows a tradition of horror films rising from obscurity online, like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. Much like those found-footage pioneers, Skinamarink is such an unexpected buzzy film because of its low-fi, off-the-grid production. Shot on a microbudget in one location, with organic visual simplicity, the film quickly begins to feel like something we shouldn’t be allowed to watch.
More importantly, Skinamarink’s instant notoriety is a product of the internet. The Blair Witch Project was a cultural touchstone of internet marketing when it launched a fake search for its “missing” stars in order to keep up its found-footage ruse. Paranormal Activity followed this model, crucially planning exclusive screenings to build feverish demand (with trailers showing thoroughly freaked-out viewers as proof positive of the film’s high scare factor).
But Skinamarink’s online journey proved to be a double-edged sword. Its notoriety is more accidental; the complete film leaked online and curiosity seekers, drawn to the strong festival reviews that compared to the likes of David Lynch, spread it like wildfire. Snippets of the movie showed up on YouTube and exploded on TikTok. This wasn’t a marketing strategy, it was people responding in real time to how afraid they were of the film. In many ways, Skinamarink feels like the first horror movie to be catapulted by TikTok alone.
The leak was sourced from an online film festival screening. In the fallout, Ball told Variety “I think people were under the impression we didn’t have distribution and they were doing us a favor by pirating, but we did have a plan [with IFC and Shudder.]” Yet the leak, and the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reactions from those who watched it illegally, has only built the film’s reputation as a horror curiosity that delivers something unique.
This means Skinamarink already has a lot to live up to. The film’s unconventionality likely ensures it won’t enjoy the kind of financial success of those horror films that similarly emerged from online chatter, and it certainly won’t be for everyone. Gore hounds and schadenfreude-chasing slasher fanatics are most likely to be disappointed by its more trance-like brand of scares. Ball commits to the dreamlike quality of the film by crafting a deliberately slow and languorous pace before the scares overtake it, and that will probably alienate some viewers.
But for those understanding what wavelength Skinamarink is on, and who feel ready to ride it, it does not disappoint. It also feels particularly prepared to find its audience in any venue because the virality of the film was birthed by film festival crowds and the pirates at home.
Seeing the film in a crowded theater brings its own unique experience, like a shared delusion. It’s the kind of horror film where you feel the energy in the room shift as those around you become increasingly scared. But there is also something else that happens when watching it in your own darkened home, feeling the terror settle in inside and all around you in your safest of places. Watching it in your basement would be like this film’s 4DX experience.
Skinamarink has the goods of the rarest and most enticing kind of horror specialty: a one-of-a-kind freakout that you recommend because it’s scarier than any other film out there. “Sure, you think that demon alien slasher movie is terrifying, but have you seen Skinamarink?” Audiences won’t sleep well, but Ball most certainly will.
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