Film Review: Under the Skin

Huh. That was… well. I'm flabbergasted. Flabbergasted and flummoxed and dumbfounded and other adjectives. This film wowed me unlike anything else I've seen in quite a while. I didn't know what to expect from the very polarizing opinions I've heard across the board (no joke: the concession stand employee at the last movie I saw warned me not to see it), but… I'm speechless.

Let me say this outright: I loved this movie. Save for the very anticlimactic ending (which I guess is kinda the point?), this was just the movie for me. But it's not a movie for everyone. Specifically, if you find films from Kubrick or Malick dull or boring, stay away from this movie. This is the type of movie specifically made to be analyzed, where the plot is conveyed rather than stated, where each moment of lingering silence is made to be picked apart. If that's not your cup of tea, don't bother because this movie will test your patience.

But, personally, I found that this film was teeming with directorial fingerprints and plenty of style to go around (even though it's nothing like director Jonathan Glazer's debut, Sexy Beast, which you should check out simply for its amazing Ben Kingsley performance). It also had a palatable tension and creepiness that stuck with me from its hypnotically enigmatic opening.

Giving a career-best performance, Scarlett Johansson plays the lead role as an alien roaming around Scotland and feeding off the men she seduces. Her vacant stare and calculated eroticism fit the bill perfectly and, even as she shows cracks in this stoicism in the film's final act, it always seems to fit where her character is plot-wise. Once she leads her victims into her lair, an entirely black room with a reflective floor that the men sink through, the film really shows its teeth, albeit in a restrained fashion. The build-up to this moment is punctuated by a peak in dread and the shrieking soundtrack (good God, the soundtrack to this film is wonderfully terrifying), but ends in muted terror rather than a sudden climax. When it's followed up later on in nightmarish detail, it's far more effective in its minimalism than going out of its way to horrify.

What I didn't expect given its emotionless opening act is the sympathy I felt for some of the characters in the film. One of Johansson's victims, whose backstory made me actually cringe in wait for his fate, conjures up more empathy in his five to ten minutes of screen time than most protagonists in films from the past year. And, in the last act, Johansson's character goes through an interesting series of events that brought me back around to her character's side despite the various murders she committed earlier in the film.

However, not all of this final act fits what comes before. A late development that hints that it may add a new avenue to the plot never goes anywhere and amounts to nothing, and the film itself rather abruptly ends once the plot has nowhere else to go. But, ultimately, the feel of this film was definitely worth the experience. It's a weird little film that felt just like the type of movie you see at 10 pm after you make a 30 minute drive (which is exactly how I saw it). And it's bound to stay with me for quite a while. At least, those skin-crawlingly frightful seduction sequences will.