phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2024

Skinamarink



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 40m
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: I was worried this was overhyped, and it was overhyped. Maybe it won't be for you! It's more experimental than anything else. It's trying to replicate the weird nightmares you had as a kid, or waking up in the middle of the night and feeling off. Except, I'm blessed with being able to sleep through the night, so I have no fear of my dark house and don't have weird dark house nightmares, and I didn't as a kid. I appreciate what this movie is trying to do, but it was so long, and so tedious. It was trying to provoke a deep emotional response in me that's just not available. But again, this may be your jam. This is a polarizing, love it or hate it kind of thing.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

It’s certainly a film that demands your concentration, a movie that works best if you know nothing about it going in and are willing to get lost in something with strange, unsettling visual language. But it’s also the kind of thing that would work best if somehow a viewer could just stumble upon it in the middle of the night on some obscure cable channel, unsure of what they’re watching but increasingly terrified as they do so, like they’re watching something they shouldn’t see. Ball attempts to recreate that feeling when you wake up at like 2:46 AM and it seems like something is just … wrong. We all know it. We’ve all felt it. And the best parts of “Skinamarink” convey that unsettled space between nightmare and reality that feels legitimately dangerous.


Matthew Jackson
A - Low-budget film delivers big-time horror

“Scariest” is, of course, in the eyes and ears of the moviegoer, but whether it wraps you in layers of sheer, visceral terror or simply engages a more fleeting, conceptual, horror-inclined area of your brain, it’s hard to deny that Ball’s film is scary. Beyond that, though, Skinamarink presents something experimental and often stunningly mesmeric, an unconventional take on a very conventional, near-universal fear. From shot to shot and on a grander, more existential scale, it’s a singularly nightmarish piece of horror filmmaking and one of the year’s must-see genre films.