User reviews

Synopsis :After falling and cutting her leg severely at a party, Esther becomes obsessed with the lack of pain she experienced. She begins inflicting wounds in the area where she was originally hurt and slowly becomes obsessed with the touch and taste of her own skin.

Overview : Not many movies have put me in a situation to where I NEEDED to turn them off just to regroup. For me, this is a GOOD sign!

*Atmosphere This movie isn't as dark as it sounds, if that makes sense. The surroundings for Esther are very bright - home, work, hanging out with friends. So when she starts going a bit mad, it's extra freaky. The music I felt added a big part to my overall feelings. *Cast/Characters I felt that Marina de Van did a marvelous job! Nothing was lost in the translation and even though you have to read the story, where to main visual effects come into play you didn't lose anything with words. I don't know if it was because the actress is also the writer and director and she was able to do her own vision but a job well done!

*F/X Not many opportunities for intense F/X but it's the subtle ones that really made my tummy turn. Whenever something looks very realistic (or basically looks like it COULD be something that happens to YOU) then that really gets....under my skin! *Pace Pretty smooth movie with only a few moments that just lingered a bit too long on Ester's "eating" habits! I quick push of the FWD button and I was safe again. My advice, don't eat pizza while watching this film!

Jekyll's Thoughts : An amazing movie that I am glad I had the opportunity to watch. I look forward to seeing what de Van has up her sleeve in the future. I give this one a 3 star rating If it makes it to your local vid store, make sure and check it out.

Dark film about a woman who becomes fascinated with her skin and self mutilation after an accident leaves her with a wound. Graphic and tough to sit through the film raises the spotlight on an extreme form of behavior that in milder forms can lead to people cutting themselves. What makes things more disturbing is the behavior isn't explained, it just is. I liked the film, as much as one can, however I was disappointed in that the film just sort of ended. Clearly its a character study more then a narrative, but at the same time I didn't get anything out of it, I just finished the film with a sense of "thats it?" Recommended only for those with strong constitutions and those wishing to be disturbed

In the slow, hidden meaning, and dark secret kind of movies, we come across something like this.

Once again, in western type movies, the protagonist always have to throw what they feel at the audience so the audience doesn't have to think. This one will. The fact that she does things that you wouldn't think you do yourself and reacts on it later will have you mind-boggled. we all have our own way of dealing with things. This one tends to deal with a more dark and gruesome way to deal with it. Which is simply fine, if you can stomach some of the scenes in the movie, and love to try to read the underlying meaning within the movie to try to get the real beauty out. Id say give it a watch 7/10

This is a movie made with the confidence of one who knows exactly what she is trying to communicate. The problem is that what is being communicated is so far beyond the norm that it is not going to be easily grasped. Esther is a highly intelligent young woman. The main thread of the story begins when she accidentally injures herself. Through the injury she begins to see her herself as merely meat, an object. Meat can not suffer, has no emotions, has no ambitions, is immune to the pressures and pettiness of everyday life. She finds this release increasingly more fascinating and attractive. This is not something she can communicate to anyone around her so she explores it in secret attempting to finally exist as a mere object devoid of all humanity. Her loneliness adds a cutting edge of sadness to the story. If she found the right person to share her thoughts with we may have ended up with an equally bizarre love story.

I found it difficult to watch this movie all the way through without a break. Some of my friends have not even managed to watch it past the first twenty minutes. If you do manage to sit through this movie, I am pretty sure that not only will you thereafter remember it vividly, you will also find it hard to stop talking about it.

The subject of this movie is the report of the obsession that put one young woman to have very special relationship with her own body. Esther is a thirty years old executive who works in an opinion poll. She is on a good way to have very good responsibilities in her job. She has an affair with a young man, Vincent, who loves her, and they are on the point of be married together. One day, Esther goes with her friend Sandrine to a dance party, and she severely injured herself one of her legs, but she don't perceive that immediately. Later, when she sees her leg's injury, the wounds fascinate her. Then she begins a very strange game with her body and her blood that leads her into self-mutilation. That pushes this young woman into a physical and social downfall with more and more mutilations that leads her toward madness. This movie is very fascinating, but almost at the limit of tolerable. Very well acted by actor-director Marina de Van, the movie seems to me to be very interesting in spite of his theme's difficulty.

You'd be disappointed if you watch it the whole way (no spoilers). It's pretty boring, not much happening, no big showdown.

The main idea is pretty good and disturbing though, yet nowadays there's better Horror movies out there and this would be a waste to watch if you have better options.

Disturbing as "In My Skin" is, the movie frequently pops into my mind. Looking at the film on the surface, I was disturbed by the imagery, as apparently were the other people in the theatre who all left before the movie was over.

This is a movie that, much like "Groundhog Day," might be best used for cinema therapy. On the surface, we see a woman who develops an unusual predilection for self-mutilation. Looking deeper though, I saw a woman who became consumed by her addictions. We would not have been as affected if she had "merely" been an alcoholic, a drug abuser, an anorexic or bulimic.

The woman's self-mutilation becomes a metaphor for any number of other self-destructive behaviors. Her self-mutilation is never seen by her friends or family. Similar to someone with anorexia wearing baggy clothes or a drug addict hiding their pain to the point where people would say, "Wow--I would have never suspected her/him to have that problem."

"In My Skin," lays out a plausible timeline for an addiction. Surely, the woman's friends and family in the film would spend hours later determining what they actually saw or thought they knew or wish they knew about the woman and her addictive behaviors.

"In My Skin" is very very powerful and uses a very disturbing metaphor that if people allowed themselves the chance to see and take the time to discuss, could be very influential long term.

This is a movie that I heard about through podcasts. Not one that I heard about regularly, but it has been covered by a couple so it went on a list of movies to check out. I selected this, knowing that it was directed by a woman. The deeper I investigated it, Marina de Van, also wrote and starred here. That made me think that when this was developed, she knew what she was setting out to do. I had a feeling that as I was settling in, that this was going to fall into the New French Extremity movement.

Synopsis: a woman grows increasingly fascinated with her body after suffering a disfiguring accident.

For this movie, as I said in my opening, we are following Eshter (de Van). She lives with Vincent (Laurent Lucas), who is her boyfriend. She is working and I get the idea that she is in marketing or something along these lines. Her best friend is Sandrine (Léa Drucker) who she also works with. They go to a party together. It seems this could be work related.

Esther decides while at this party to go outside and walk around the yard. There is junk in the back, which is like metal and things. She ends up taking a misstep and cuts her leg. She doesn't think it is that deep and goes back inside. We then see that she continues with the night, dancing with a guy who is getting a bit forward. Sandrine wants to leave so they're in line for the bathroom. Esther sneaks off, going upstairs to see if there is another one. That is when she realizes that she has a deep gash in her leg and it is bleeding everywhere. She tries to stop it and hides when she hears someone coming. It is Sandrine, looking for her and alerted her that the guy who owns the place noticed the blood. They thought they'd find someone dead. Sandrine doesn't realize that this is from her friend.

The two of them then go to a bar. It is after this that Esther seeks out a doctor. He is shocked by what he finds. He can't believe that she didn't notice it when it happened. It is also odd to him that she took so long to get it treated. He is concerned with her nerves around the wound. Esther doesn't want additional procedures to fix it. She just wants it cleaned and covered so it can heal. She seems fine with it scarring.

Like the synopsis said, this starts a change within her. We see her in the bathtub where she is pulling at her skin. There's a moment at work where she sneaks off, removes her pants to stab metal into the wound and the leg around it. She tries to hold it together for an upcoming business deal, but we see that she could be descending into madness. She has an experience at a work dinner where she believes her left hand is no longer attached. We then see her as she stabs into it with a knife and fork. She reveals things to Vincent and Sandrine, who are concerned for her. She doesn't want their help though, which complicates her life further. Work is affected as she disappears and the more that she harms herself, the more difficult it is to hide.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that this is an interesting little character study of Esther. I'm going to start with a positive and negative here. I love that this doesn't waste any time getting into it. We see her with Vincent, then we get a brief look at her before going to this party where everything starts. I do have a negative here though. I wish that this would just give us slightly more of a baseline for Esther before she starts harming herself. I can infer that this is the first time she's ever done this. This accident sparks that.

Now that I've set that up, let me delve a bit more into Esther. I should say here that this feels like it is borrowing heavily from Crash by David Cronenberg. Esther does something simple like gash her leg on metal and then this starts her spiral to harm herself more and more. This goes just deeper than that though. I do get the idea that she is dealing with depression. It seems to me like she is losing gripes on reality and uses the pain the ground her. She also cannot go too long without harming herself. I do think that we need a bit more here to connect all the dots. This seems to go more for the shock value of it. I will credit de Van here. She is great as our lead. I love seeing her as she loses control of herself as she does herself harm.

I'm going to shift gears and talk about the rest of the cast. What I like here is that they're here for different things to push Esther as we go. Vincent and Sandrine want to help her. She doesn't want their help though. Vincent and her live together. They're also planning their future together. I do like seeing him get frustrated with her as she spirals. Lucas plays his role well. Drucker on the other hand is a good friend. She shuts out Esther though when she sees there's nothing she can do. Dominique Reymond and Bernard Alane are good as two clients that are the dinner with her as well as her boss is there. That scene was tense. I thought that the acting here was good to push her to where she ends up. Sometimes despite their help.

All that I went to then go into would be filmmaking. The strongest part here are the effects. We can see at times that she isn't hurting herself really. That is fine because what we saw made me cringe. I like the fact that this went practical with what they used. Something that helps is the framing and the cinematography. They simulate all this for the most part to look real enough. I credit them there to help preserve that. Other than that, I'd say that the soundtrack fit for what was needed.

In conclusion, this doesn't have the deepest story and it doesn't necessarily need it. We see that a fateful accident has messed with Esther and she descends into madness where she can't stop harming herself. She even turns to self-cannibalism. De Van's performance is great. The rest of the cast pushes her to where she ends up. I thought that this is well made from the effects to cinematography and framing. If I do have an issue though, this is a slow story wise since there isn't much to it. This does make up for it with the shock value. Not one I'd recommend to everyone. If you like French Extreme films and can manage realistic effects, then give this a watch. Not one that I would watch regularly though.

My Rating: 7 out of 10.

Do not see this film. There is no plot, no story, and unattractive people. The whole film consists of a woman cutting at parts of her body. I had to look away at many of the bloody scenes. I would have walked out, except I wanted to see how it ended. The ending was ???? Who knows? The small group of people who attended this showing were grumbling on the way out. What a waste!

The Belcourt Cinema in Nashville warned ticket holders that they would not get a refund if they left the theater as In My Skin, a creepy French quasi-horror film about a girl who cuts into her body, played -- no matter how much they protested. Three people left the theater and one girl looked to be crying. I got light-headed, my forehead felt hot, my stomach wanted to void its contents, and my brain wanted me to flee -- and that was when she went to see the doctor about the cut on her leg. (I had to close my eyes and calm my thoughts for about a minute.) The wound was nasty but it was nothing compared to what she did to herself later. Most of the cutting happened off-camera which on made her actions more gruesome because the imagination had been activated. Just the sound alone was enough to make me cringe. When I slept later that night a nightmare haunted me. My leg was craved of all it flesh and muscle until nothing was left but bone. Yes, this movie truly disturbed me worse than anything I've ever seen. Worse than Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Hellraiser -- mainly because In My Skin was done as a real film. No, serial killers or demons from Hell, just a girl with mental problems.

In My Skin is a disgusting and disturbing film. It follows Esther, a woman who becomes increasingly obsessed with self-mutilation and self-cannibalization after an accident that wounds her leg.

Esther is a tragic figure of sorts. She is intelligent and successful. She's good at her job and looking forward to moving in with her boyfriend. This is all threatened when her tendency for self-destruction starts to put a strain on her relationship and career.

Although there are a few truly grotesque and wince-inducing body horror sequences, including a bizarre and unsettling dinner scene, the film is not simply gross or gory without a point. As it goes on, it becomes clear Esther is suffering from an addiction of sorts, and she goes to great lengths to hide her addiction from her lover, her friends, and her job.

There is an authentic sincerity and dedication to Marina de Van's performance. You get the feeling even Esther herself may not consciously know why she's doing this, just that she needs to satisfy an irresistible urge.

Overall, In My Skin is a disturbing film that successfully uses body horror to explore dissociation and addiction.

In My Skin is a disturbing and very psychological film. It tells the story of a woman that injures herself at a party. Unaware of the severity of the leg wound, she doesn't discover it until later. She gets patched up, but is soon scratching away at the scars. What starts as morbid curiosity soon devolves into obsessional mutilation. The film focuses on self-mutilation in a very sickening way. This is a compulsion that can't be controlled. In typical horror fashion, it takes a serious and very real subject and amplifies it without becoming corny and gimmicky. It was interesting to see a woman destroy herself, which made it both tragic, but also strangely empowering. Overall I found it got to be a bit repetitive, and as the protagonist shoved away most people that cared for her, it just became a series of mutilations.

When I bought In my Skin I didn't really know that the whole film was about self-harming and self-mutilation (they both mean the same thing, but it makes me sound cleverer!) I thought it was about a woman who gets something supernatural in her skin, a bit like the killer vines in The Ruins and it was taking over her body and she had to get it out etc. If I had known that In my Skin was about self-harming then I would've been more hesitant about buying it, because I can deal with bodies being dismembered and gallons of blood, but I can't deal with relatable things like cuts and stuff. I cringe at the blood sample scene in The Thing for Christ's sake and I nearly die at that wrist-cutting scene in Martyrs! So what would I be like in this? Well I didn't turn away (I paid for it, so I'm watching it!) but I did cringe. A lot! By the end of it I felt so tense and there was a lot of face scrunching and bloated cheeks. I find it hard to think of a film more cringeier if I'm honest!

However, if you can deal with self-mutilation then you won't find In My Skin too repellent (if you don't find any of it repellent then you need serious help). I found In My Skin to be a profoundly interesting film. However, I could also see why people would find it boring and repetitive because I would've liked to have seen perhaps a stronger narrative. But in terms of a character study, In my Skin is superb! I just can't help but think that it could've been better if it balanced intense character study with engaging plot like Black Swan did so tremendously well. Having said that In My Skin is extremely involving as the camera never leaves our main character (Esther). It follows her around in a mostly hand-held style so that we really get inside her head and for the most part it is really interesting.

There are some quite astonishing moments and I quite liked the way in which it lingered on her self-mutilation because it gave it a disturbingly realistic edge and also conveyed how significant these events are to her. The restaurant scene is a particular stand-out moment as it mixes realism with surrealism so that we really get deep inside Esther's head. I found it clever how everyone's talking, but Esther's not listening and neither are we (well reading). We're as transfixed to her body as she is. Another stand-out moment of directing is the use of split screen towards the end, as we get that horrible oppressive feeling which Esther must feel too.

There's a fantastic sense of a downward spiral and I really like that sort of thing when a character goes on a journey from being normal and ending up as a complete wreck, which is what Darren Aronofsky does so incredibly well. Obviously, In My Skin isn't as fantastic as Aronofsky, but it is a highly memorable and psychologically intense piece of work. The Marina lady who wrote, directed and starred is clearly a talented woman because she does all three tremendously well, although she could do with a slight push in the writing area. In My Skin leaves you feeling filthy which is what a good horror film should do! It's yet another example of superior French horror and shows that they really do know the real meaning of fear.

Although In My Skin may not be as great as other French works such as Calvaire, Inside and Martyrs. It is still a highly thought-provoking and brave film which dares to go where many people don't have the guts to. The intense character development makes the film quite gripping and you end up feeling quite attached to Esther despite her monstrous behaviour, because it's obvious that she's normal at heart, or at least used to be normal. In My Skin is a tragedy in the end and it's full of emotion and directional flourish. It's also one of the cringiest films I've ever seen. I'd recommend it for the brave.

I would not say that what I just have seen is a real horror. I would call it drama with a little sickening horror twist. I can believe that it isn't for everybody. It was made one year before Haute Tension, the start of the French sickies. The storyline is simple. A simple and normal girl has no problem at all until at a party she falls in a bunch of metal things. She won't make any notice of it and parties on before going to a hospital. There she got the news that she came too late to heal it properly. She has to go under surgery but she doesn't want it. But she becomes obsessed with her wounds. The feeling in her leg goes away and she starts cutting herself until things really go wrong with her. Horror geeks will have a problem with the movie due the reason that they talk a lot, typical for French movies. And drama geeks will cut away once she will go wild on her wounds. So it's up to y'all to watch it. But if you want to see the evolvement of French sickies then you better watch it. At the end of the day, if you liked Cutting Moments than this is your piece of cake.

In My Skin certainly has some problems; but one of these problems isn't originality, and while things such as a lack of a true plot formula and explanation for the central character's actions may put some viewers off, the film deserves huge credit for stepping out of the mainstream and delivering something a little different to what most film fans will be used to. France has emerged over the past few years as one of the major forces in modern horror cinema, and while this film can't really be judged on the same terms as some of its fellow gory French horrors; it surely does help to bolster the nation's position at the top of the pile. The film represents a big personal project for Marina de Van; who wrote, directs and stars in the film! The plot begins when the central characters injures her leg fairly badly at a party. She is confused by the fact that despite the injury, she didn't really feel any pain and it's not long before she begins experimenting with her body and pain tolerance; eventually becoming unable to refrain from slicing herself open.

The film is very different to the average mainstream horror and will not be well received in all circles. However, this certainly is a fascinating journey into a woman's 'discovery of herself' (for lack of a better term). The film does lack a defining point and becomes a voyeuristic look into what can only be described as the central character's disease. The film must then rely on its central character and set pieces, and the writer/director/lead actress definitely does deliver in this area. The film is not short on blood, but it's all used well and never feels gratuitous. The real power of the film comes from depicting the character's experiments on herself; I can generally stomach any amount of disgusting gore, but seeing the character here slice herself open had me squirming and that is testament both to the way we are made to care for the character and the very realistic way that the film is portrayed. The film is carried by the lead actress who is always the star despite some good supporting performances. Marina de Van can certainly be very proud of her work on this one! The appeal of this film can only go so far, but personally I loved it and will not hesitate to recommend that everyone at least gives it a look!

I heard about this film while at the NY Horror film festival where the audience was told they HAD to see this intense & brutal movie…and I read some reviews that called it amazing and gripping…LIES! I recently became a fan of Gasper Noe's `Irreversible' and that was an amazing, brutal and brilliant piece of filmmaking, so this also being a French film I thought it might live up to the hype. Well, don't waste your time…this was perhaps the most boring film I have seen in years…It was boring, then briefly brutal then boring again…it tries to be artistic but it's really just autistic…it's not a daring brave piece of filmmaking because it truly makes no sense…I tried very hard to find either the reason for the woman's actions or the hidden meaning in them…NOTHING! Someone had a very good idea and executed in a terrible, boring, artsy, unjustified way.

Saw this at a cult film festival. You'd think a cult audience would be able to stomach depictions of self-inflicted violence, but several people walked out. I can't really blame them. It is an intimate and plausible portrait of a woman who has lived her life on autopilot until she finally finds a way to feel alive and beautiful: by mutilating herself. She seems painfully aware that her friends and coworkers won't get it, understandably, and that once she takes that path, there is only one way out.

Devastating.

Unbearable film. If the original idea is good, the main actress sucks and completely ruins the film. Badly filmed, no end. A film of cannibals to avoid!