A Pele Fria

Cold Skin is quite the original unique little tale, but ultimately it fails to deliver on its promises.

It tells the story of a military intelligence man set to do a scientific study on a remote island for a year replacing an existing gentleman. There is nobody on the island bar one, a disgruntled insane from isolation man named Gruner. As night falls he learns that the island holds a terrible secret.

Arguably a "Creature feature" this horror stars the excellent British veteran Ray Stevenson and was made by French/Spanish studios. I'm very glad I came across it because despite its flaws it's quite remarkable, it was nice to find a movie this original and visually pleasing considering that it's not a mega budget film.

The concept is outstanding, the delivery however is very mixed. They manage to make it all look good and Stevenson is on form as usual however the writing is really messy and the film simply should have flowed better.

When the credits rolled I was saddened by the wasted potential here, on paper it had the makings of a fantastic feature but the end result here is something that loses steam at around the 2/3 mark and hits you with a very uninspired ending.

Well worth a watch simply to marvel over what it does have to offer but it's a fine example of a ball being dropped by all involved.

The Good:

Solid concept

Looks great

Ray Stevenson

The Bad:

Loses steam

Wasted potential

Weak finale

A dark story of what colonialism might have been to the indigenous habitats of a newly discovered land. Wonderfully shot cinematography followed by brilliant musical score and unforgettable story. Very enjoyable.

I didn't know what to expect from this movie when I sat down to watch it. Just before the start of the First World War, a young man (David Oakes) takes a job charting the weather on a remote island, only to discover it's not as 'uninhabited' as he first thought. Besides the location's only 'official' resident, a lighthouse keeper played by Ray Stevenson, every night the place is besieged by seemingly never-ending armies of fish people - and they're not the sweet Disney Little Mermaid kind either!

So, the two men must start a fight for their lives in order to survive not just the night, but an entire year before the next boat passes by and hopefully rescue them.

I really enjoyed this to begin with. There's a real feel for the isolation of the setting and the characters are believable in their actions - at the beginning. However, as other reviewers have pointed out, the audio is terrible in places and the conversations between the two - only - characters is almost impossible to make out. It's because of this I may well have missed out some explanations of various plot points, like why one fish person seems to be nice and Ray Stevenson is okay with her living alongside them when he simply wants to wipe the rest of them off the face of the planet.

The creature effects are good and it's nice to see not too much computer-generated effects, but the movie starts to drag in places, partly because there's only really two characters and there's not an awful lot for them to do, other than fighting off wave after wave of monsters.

By the time the film comes to an end you'll kind of have guessed how it's going to play out. There's no real shockers along the way. It's an okay sort of film that was effectively a good idea, but just kind of outstayed its welcome based on the little 'story' there was to tell here.

The story is somewhat interesting and keeps one's attention. But the strongest attribute of this film is the casting of two very capable British actors, David Oakes and Ray Stevenson, in the main roles. I had only seen Oakes play unlikable characters before, while Stevenson has usually been in more positive roles.

The cinematography, which features picturesque scenes of the isolated island and the surrounding ocean, is also quite good.

This film will not be for everyone (hence the disappointing low rating). For starters, it's almost an exact adaptation from the Spanish (Barcelona, Spain) award wining debut novel (translated to 37 languages) by Albert Sánchez Piñol, and directed almost perfectly by Frenchman Xavier Gens.

It is not your typical big-screen huge budget Hollywood action blockbuster with A-list actors, and thus should not be compared (as other reviews have) to The Shape of Water. Instead, it's an artistic piece shot extremely well that was written by a Spaniard and presented by a Frenchman - definitely no Hollywood here.

The directing, cinematography, landscape, vfx/sfx and score where outstanding - near perfect. The actors (never heard of either) performed exceptionally well and were very convincing.

Yes, there were some avoidable obvious plot issues, which was disappointing considering how great the rest of the production was. However I'm thinking that it was an editing issue and cutting scenes to get the length down to 108 mins, of which considering the slow pace, I'd be complaining on the length, yet it didn't feel that long. It could also be a screenplay adaptation issue from the two novice writers - they did squeeze in as much as they could from the novel, but maybe should have cut certain scenes shorter to fill in the blanks.

I've read some reviewers had questions about certain things that happened. Some of those issue are answered if you stop and think why this happened and/or dig a little deeper into the meaning. Others, you will need to read the book. I did, and have nothing to question, but do understand how others who didn't read the book would have questions.

A very impressive film, unlike any other I have seen, and needs to be appreciated for what it is, and how is was shown. Would I recommend it or see it again? Absolutely. Had better screenwriters adapted the novel, this would have been a perfect 10/10. But still is a well deserved 8.5 rounded up to a 9/10 from me.