Rating: NR | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: January 13th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: IFC Midnight / Shudder
Director(s): Kyle Edward Ball
Writer(s): Kyle Edward Ball

Can we watch something happy now?

If Sharon, Lois, and Bram taught me anything as a kid, it was that you never “skinamarink” without a good “dinky dink” chaser. Otherwise you get caught in the spiderweb and no elephant wants that.

So, I guess I don’t remember much about that show at all beside the cartoon opening credits—something that is apparently not yet in the public domain since writer/director Kyle Edward Ball surely would have used it alongside the toons that serve as light source and score for the proceedings of his film Skinamarink. I use “proceedings” lightly, however, since I’m honestly not entirely sure anything is going on. Yes, Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) and Kevin (Lucas Paul) are scared when they wake up to find Dad and all the windows/doors leading out of their house gone. But that’s a premise, not a plot.

I won’t lie. I wanted to stick a knife in my eye around twenty minutes in. That’s an hour before a disembodied voice orders one of the children to do the same. I also thought Paranormal Activity was excruciatingly boring and that spawned an insane number of sequels—so what do I know? People seem to really be connecting with the creepy-factor Ball creates via low-light grain and obscenely skewed compositions that make it so we never see a human face until he decides to use one as a jumpscare (accompanied by the deafeningly shrill sound he punctuates every jumpscare with as though he realized they don’t work without the extra sensory assault). I didn’t. I was annoyed.

So, speculate about what is happening all you want. I don’t think any hypothesis from it being the fever dream of a boy who bumped his head falling down the stairs (Then why is the first non-static sequence from Kaylee’s POV?) to it being purgatory on the way to Hell after their mother murder-suicided them to it being a metaphor for childhood trauma centering on a messy divorce will sway me to care enough to reevaluate by initial reaction. Because despite some admittedly effective frames, the quick cuts and heavy-handed sound design devoid of any narrative context supplies nothing but evidence that Ball is a confident filmmaker who stuck to his guns to ensure his debut gains cult status.

The sheer fact that 80% of the ungodly 100-minute runtime refuses to actually engage with the action as more than “corner-of-the-eye” periphery prevented me from investing in any of the so-called stakes. I just hoped for a payoff that never arrived. Because if the kids don’t seemed scared, why should I?

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A still from SKINAMARINK, courtesy of IFC Films.