re: Skinamarink (2023) is the Best Horror Film of all Time (NO SPOILERS)

You could at least site whoever actually wrote all that shite.

I Watched this in the theater on Friday, and I absolutely hated it.

I don’t see this being a movie where there will be much middle ground either. I think either you’ll hate it, or it was able to tap into some childhood nightmares and work for you. Unfortunately it didn’t work for me, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. It could’ve easily shed a good 30-40 minutes, and I probably wouldn’t have hated it…just disliked it.

All that said, for those that haven’t seen it, I’d still say give it a shot. Maybe you’re one of the people it will work for.

The trailer is scarier than the movie tbh.

Definitely not Best Horror Film of all time, but it's sufficiently unsettling.

quote:

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. If you want a weird nightmare come to life movie just watch Eraser

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My weird nightmare would be seeing your avatar irl

IIRC, he's worked in film or film-adjacent industries in the past but isn't anymore.

I have now seen Skinamarink. Spoilers ahead (if this movie can even be spoiled), so you are warned.

I certainly wouldn't call it the best horror film of all time, but I did enjoy it. The pacing is a bit of an issue, though. It is so slow it makes 2001 seem like a relentless thrill ride. 20-30 minutes of static shots of doors and furniture could probably have been cut with no loss. I get that the filmmaker was trying to create an unnerving, dreamlike atmosphere where anything might happen, but there are stretches in the film where it begins to feel like nothing is going to happen. You begin to stop dreading what horrors the movie might show you and instead start to wish that something horrible would hurry up and happen just to move things along.

However, as I said, despite these drawbacks I did enjoy the movie, and that's because when it works, it really works. The scene where Kaylee finds her parents in the bedroom is one of the creepiest, most tense things I've ever seen. Kevin's descent into the basement and his final trip upstairs are pretty harrowing, too. The atmosphere that the film creates is an effective vehicle for delivering true horror, and if in the end the film spends a little (well, maybe a lot) too much time working on the atmosphere and not enough time on the actual "horror" part, at least when it does get around to shifting into gear, it packs quite a wallop.

Now, having said all of that, I will freely admit that this movie might not work for you. You have to really, really like psychological horror films. If you are looking for blood or guts or jump scares or anything even approaching any of those things, this movie will deliver exactly none of them. If you don't like experimental films and need your movies to have something at least resembling a plot, you will not like Skinamarink. This film is less a movie than it is an imagination stimulator. None of the pivotal events of the "story" happen on screen. They are only hinted at, and the filmmakers expect your imagination to fill in all the rest. If the inside of your head is a scary place, this can be extremely effective. If you are not the imaginative type, then, well, it isn't. That's not a knock on anyone. It's just the reality of this movie.

Final summation: Skinamarink, like Eraserhead before it, is an attempt to capture a bad dream on film. If it is less successful than Lynch's film was in this endeavor, it's because it also attempts to be a horror movie, whereas Eraserhead makes no effort to be anything other than a bad dream. It is slow to the point of immobility, but it does create a unique atmosphere you will not find elsewhere, and when it finally decides to get around to scaring you, it will scare the shite out of you - as long as you are the right kind of person. Otherwise it's just going to bore you. So I do recommend this movie, but only to those who read this review and find the description intriguing.