572 Days Later

 

I think I read that Skinamarink was supposed to be like Paranormal Activity but with an even lower budget. As it turns out, it is less Paranormal Activity and more Inland Empire. Walking out of the theater, I was shocked that Skinamarink was being shown at a multiplex and that it had achieved word of mouth success beyond David Lynch aficionados.

The story concerns two children who are in the 4-5 year range. The year is 1995. The pair wake up in the middle of the night and strange things start happening. For instance, doors, windows, and even a commode are disappearing and leaving blank walls and floors. Eventually their parents mysteriously vanish as well. They retreat downstairs to the comforting glow of the television which is tuned to a cartoon marathon. A creepy voice is heard and things start getting rearranged. For example, a chair becomes affixed to the dining room ceiling and VHS tapes suddenly appear on the living room wall. And all of this happens in underlit sets on very grainy video footage.

There's nothing very Lynchian about the general plot but it is rather the style that evokes that director of the surreal. There are very few faces shown here and instead we see their feet and legs, often on the far side of a chair. On the other hand, we get many (sometimes rather lengthy) low angle shots of the tops of walls and ceilings, shots of the TV or a pile of Legos, and low angle shots of dark hallways. I suspect that these are meant to mimic the viewpoints of the kids. We hear them talking but see them very little. Sometimes their speech is not understandable and we get subtitles. Other times we get no subtitles.

I suspect Skinamarinks is trying to emulate basic childhood fears - of the dark, of being alone, and whatnot. While there's a lot of interesting and very creepy material here, the effect is dulled by the long, static shots of walls. The scene where one or both of the kids go into their parents' bedroom is a creepfest of the highest order. And I loved how a cut to the dining room offhandedly reveals a chair on the ceiling. But those shots of ceiling/walls just took me out of the moment.

I tried to find a pattern but failed. Did I miss subtle changes in those shots? We kept returning to the upstairs hallway - the one with the round light fixture - but I couldn't find anything really new. Maybe more or less light, I suppose. I just really wanted to find some kind of pattern, some kind of change with each successive return to that hallway but found nothing.

Like I said, there's some great horror elements here, including a jump scare or 2, and I really liked the ending - very Lynchian - as the house turns into the one in House of Leaves with is non-Euclidian geometry some 572 days later. Those poor kids. But I felt it either needed to be shortened or to have had the long glances down dark hallways joined by other scenes of a less static, but no less creepy, nature. Just a little something more.