Skinamarink

Director: Kyle Edward Ball (USA). Year of Release: 2022

1995. A fuzzy screen, like someone’s been playing a video and fallen asleep, leaving the telly just to play static and white noise. We hear the occasional sound, sometimes the pleading voices of children. The camera uses wonky angles to focus on wooden beams just below the ceiling. At one stage, we see – from a very far distance – the bottom half a child’s legs. This – occasionally interspersed with cartoons and pre-rock and roll music – continues for quite a while.

There is a point in Skinamarink – maybe 15 minutes in – when you realise that this is all there’s going to be. The out of focus shots of the tops of walls and people’s feet, the sparse dialogue that’s so quiet that it needs subtitles, the endless shots of blocks of lego … this isn’t a slow run up to something that’s much more exciting. This is it. Some reviews have not liked the film but said it would make a good 30 minute short. These reviews are at least 29 minutes too generous.

Occasionally – but very rarely – something happens, usually off screen. We hear someone dialing a phone number. A man’s voice explains that Kevin has falled down the stairs and hit his head. But he’s fine, and didn’t even need stitches. And then we go back to grainy film and the occasional cartoon. This is a scene which possibly could have let us learn what is happening for ourselves, but it remains wrenched from any context. We are not allowed to understand what is going on.

Many reviews contain precisely the same text. The film is about two children waking in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and that all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. Which only goes to show that some reviewers will write anything they read in the press pack. I defy anyone to watch the film cold and to say with any confidence what it’s about, let alone be so precise in their description. This isn’t film criticism, it’s hagiography.

Skinamarink is the sort of film which is beloved by some film makers and critics – less so by people who’ve given up their evening to actually watch it. I have never seen so many 1/10 user reviews in IMDB. The film is full of symbolism apparently, although the shots are so obscure and unfocussed that it’s not really clear what is being symbolised. Among other things, the scenes are so dark and quiet that it’s hard to tell what is going on, or if indeed anything is going on.

A number of reviewers have been provoked to pose all sorts of questions about what it all really means. What is happening inside the darkened rooms that we can never fully penetrate? This is one way of reacting, and one which shows that those reviewers presumably got a lot more out of Skinamarink than I did. But frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. And I had the sneaking suspicion that there was nothing going on, that the Emperor was buck naked.

Frankly speaking, while I’m all for films which expect a little imagination from their audience, it’s not our job to fill in all the blanks, to create a plot and characters to fill the void of what we see (or don’t see) on the screen. Apparently, some (but not all) people think that, despite the tedium which riddles most of the film, the ending is good. You know what? They could be right, but by this point I’d zoned out so far that I really didn’t care.

Fortunately, I saw the film at the late night Saturday showing at the end of a very busy week. I just sat back and left it drift over me. I don’t think I fell asleep, but to be honest there was no way of telling whether I’d missed an important section. Since there was no development and nothing actually happened, you just can’t know. I’ve read some reviews of people saying after watching Silimarink they couldn’t sleep at night. It had quite the opposite effect on me.

Maybe I just lack imagination. Maybe. But Skinamarink can only succeed if we identify with the characters who are (1) young children, who cannot see the world the same way that we do, and (2) impossible to fully empathise with because we never so much as see them. Surely empathy requires you to have some sort of understanding of the empathee. Maybe it works better with parents, but I’m not going to go out and get a child just so I can enjoy this dull film.

When I first got a VHS player, I found a cheap video of an Andy Warhol film. Something which may have been interesting when shown in a gallery, when you could view 2 minutes and then move on, was an excrutiating ordeal sat on my sofa at home. One can only imagine what it would be like to sit in a cinema and feel obliged to watch it from beginning to end. So, when I call Skinamarink Warholian, I do not necessarily mean this as a compliment.

Apparently Skinamarink was made for $15,000, but you really can’t see where the money went. Even the cartoons are in the public domain. It’s lo-fi look has made some reviewers to compare it with the Blair Witch Project or Eraserhead. But the Blair Witch Project has a plot, and Eraserhead has many moments of humour and just plain weirdness. Skinamarink has nothing like this, nothing memorable or profound. Just 100 minutes worth of pretentious waffle.

I have rarely seen a film where “like watching paint dry” has been such an accurate comparison. Maybe we need a new simile: “like watching a blurred film of different parts of a house”. At one point, we hear a voice, presumably Kevin’s, asking “can we watch something happy now?” Yes please. Or, something sad. Or tragic. Or even a car chase. Anything other than this endless stream of tedium.