Skinamarink - Il risveglio del male

What happens when you get a community college film maker an 8mm Snapchat filter and a near sighted toddler as a cameraman? This. Hope you like ankles, muffled dialogue with subtitles, closeups of door frames and other pseudo artistic shots of doorknobs and corners of televisions. I'd rather watch the emoji movie for 24 hours straight than ever see this again. I'm a huge horror fan and have been for my entire life, ad never been so disappointed. Currently seeing a 60 second closeup of shredded wheat in a bowl with no milk. Literally...that's a scene. But, it does transition to a single power outlet for 15 seconds after that. And, as a bonus, you get one line of dialogue every 3-4 minutes like "dad, I'm going to go to sleep" while focusing on a linoleum tile for 24 seconds. Wait! I just saw a calf AND a foot! Do NOT waste one second on this "film"

Well, there are three types of viewers that come out of a viewing of Skinamarink. First we have the people who praises it as the next best thing since sliced bread. Then we have the people who absolutely detest this movie. And lastly there are the people who respect the effort and the new approach but felt that there is a lot lacking. I'm leaning towards the latter. Yeah the movie has an interesting presentation and some neat sound engineering. But like others said before the 100 minutes runtime is stretching the goodwill, even for people who are familiar with arthouse movies.

The movie has a lot of gaps in it's narration and it's up to the viewers imagination or personal experience to fill those gaps and ultimately enjoy the movie. For some people it hits very close to home and they have no problem doing so. Others are bored to tears. So I have to admit, it is a unique movie in it's own right and I highly respect that, although I personally didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted.

It shares certain similarities to a videogame called Gone Home. It also plays in an empty house with missing parents and you have to figure out the story by pure observation and patience. But it had a decent story and an interesting ending. For people who are disappointed by this movie for the lack of a coherent story but like the ambience, I can recommend at least this game.

All the people saying this film is plotless are wrong. There is a plot here, although it is extemely vague and thin. Might be one of the thinnest plotlines I've ever seen and that is what caused the film to be at times unbearably boring for me. I actually enjoyed the aesthetic for the film, the faceless characters, the low light, lofi camera work. It's a style that could present a high creep factor with the proper story to go along with it. This is not that story.

I will say this is much better than the director's previous effort 'Heck', which is basically the short film that started this one. It feels like the director has a better grip on the style he's presenting here. That still doesn't make up for the lack of story here.

The film opens with one of the children falling down the stairs and this starts the chain of events that make me believe the child actually died when this happened and he is living in some purgatory or hell. What follows after this could only be described as mean spirited and harsh, but it unfolds so slowly that you feel like you're just watching paint dry. There are some suitably creepy moments but they are few and far between. Actually there is maybe about 3 or 4 creepy scenes in the entire film, the ending being far and wide the most uncomfortable. Had me looking over my shoulder as I was leaving the theater.(I had the whole theater to myself, I'm assuming due to bad weather, but it was probably the best way to watch this film as isolation is a major theme.) The ending felt like I was being personally talked to by the faceless, out of focus boy and I hated it, but in a good way.

All in all, I still couldn't call this a good movie and it will only appeal to a very niche horror crowd. I commend the director for creating something so different. I just wish there was as much thought put into the story as there was in the shooting style.

2 portals out of 5.

????? ?????? Don't even know what to say Some loved this movie. Some hated this movie. I fall inbetween. It's less a movie and more of an abstract art piece of different (very dark) shots and clips of things happening (or not happening) around a house where the windows and doors mysteriously vanished leaving 2 young children trapped inside with...something. It's extremely boring, nothing happens on screen, but I do have to say the jump scares got me GOOD. Some parts were very creepy and it had great atmospheric potential and I could see the vision they had, but it felt more like a grad school project with a budget of $10. It's Paranormal Activity's less formed, visually darker, weirder, younger sibling. Art is great - but when a movie relies too much on being abstract, they forget to actually create a film.

Although the title of this review may appear unkind, it is nevertheless, apt.

I really wanted to like this film but ended up bored and angry. Angry that the filmmaker had been so self-indulgent as to presume the audience would be able to withstand 100 minutes of this punishment.

I admire what he did, the execution is excellent and I was immediately drawn into the atmosphere that the film exudes. However, as other reviewers have noted, this would have made a decent short film, maybe 20 minutes. As it stands, it overplays it's hand dramatically and had me begging to be relinquished from the monotony of the long takes which comprise the film's bloated runtime.

My hope is that Shudder cuts it down significantly before it has an official on-line release. It's too bad. It really does tap into something visceral and primal.