Reviews
‘Skinamarink’ Review – Abstract Lo-Fi Horror Mines Chills from Suggestion and Ambiance
Writer/Director Kyle Edward Ball’s microbudget feature debut Skinamarink earned critical accolades during its festival run before becoming a viral sensation late last year on TikTok. Its buzzy reputation for terrifying viewers and its title deriving from a children’s song made popular by Sharon, Lois & Bram instilled the expectation for a unique kindertrauma horror movie. While it delivers on its singular vision, its experimental nature and reliance on technique and the power of suggestion will likely polarize.
The 1995-set Skinamarink uses the setup of two young children, Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), waking in the night to find their parents gone along with all windows and doors. The siblings band together around the living room TV with toys and blankets for comfort as they fend for themselves, but it soon becomes clear that perhaps they’re not alone.
Skinamarink eschews conventional storytelling or plot to immerse viewers into the personification of traumatic childhood nightmares through lo-fi ambiance and imagery. Ball and cinematographer Jamie McRae present this nightmare through static shots via grainy analog photography and long takes of shadowed corridors or rooms lit by the hazy blue glow of the television. The striking composition instills an abstract Creepypasta vibe. The camera gazes at empty spaces or eerie imagery, never showing the faces of its child leads or the unseen threat. It’s an innovative means of building atmosphere with dread and fear, giving viewers barely enough context clues to fill those empty spaces.
Accompanying this is the diegetic and ambient sound design that favors crackling noise and whispers so hushed that most of the dialogue is subtitled. The only semblance of a score comes from the cartoons playing on the TV. The ambiguity of the sound and imagery seeks to disorient.
While Ball succeeds in crafting a liminal reality with style, Skinamarink depends on prolonged patience and a willingness to fill in the vast nothingness through imagination. Not much happens in the 100-minute runtime, and the tactics begin to feel repetitive after a while. It winds up running overlong as a result. You’re either on this movie’s peculiar, dreamlike wavelength, or you’re not, and the latter can make this feel more like an endurance test.
Ball recreates that otherworldly feeling of unexplainable nightmares through audio and visual disorientation, trapping viewers in the claustrophobic perspective of Kevin and Kaylee. But Ball is too effective in generating that inescapable feeling; Skinamarink overstretches its minimalist, abstract horror experiment. For some, that’ll instill unnerving terror, while others will find it too impenetrable to engage.
As an overextended, kinder trauma voyage that operates on a vibe over a story, Skinamarink commits fully to its unique approach. Ball’s painstaking recreation of a shared childhood nightmare through lo-fi ambiance on a minuscule budget is commendable. It seems best suited to watch in that half-awake delirious state in the late night hours, home alone with the lights off. There’s no real story to follow; it’s an unsettling mood piece to immerse viewers in a nightmare realm. As impressive as this experiment in terror can be, it’s too sparse to earn its runtime.
Skinamarink releases in theaters on Friday 13, 2023.
Not even death can slow Chucky in “There Will Be Blood,” the penultimate episode of “Chucky” Season 3. With the killer receiving a mortal blow in the last episode, Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) can now take full advantage of the White House’s bizarre supernatural purgatory, leaving him free to continue his current reign of terror as a ghost. While that spells trouble for Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson), and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind), it makes for an outrageously satisfying bloodbath heading into next week’s finale.
“There Will Be Blood” covers a lot of ground in short order, with Charles Lee Ray confronting his maker over his failures before he can continue his current path of destruction. Lexy, Jake, and Devon continue their desperate bid to find Lexy’s sister, which means seeking answers from the afterlife. They’re in luck, considering Warren Pryce (Gil Bellows) enlists the help of parapsychologists to solve the White House’s pesky paranormal problem. Of course, Warren also has unfinished business with the surviving First Family members, including the President’s assigned body double, Randall Jenkins (Devon Sawa). Then there’s Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly), who’s feeling the immense weight of her looming execution.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray, Chucky — (Photo by: SYFY)
Arguably, the most impressive aspect of “Chucky” is how series creator Don Mancini and his fantastic team of writers consistently swing for the fences. That constant “anything goes” spirit pervades the entire season, but especially this episode. Lexy’s new beau, Grant (Jackson Kelly), exemplifies this; he’s refreshingly quick to accept even the most outlandish concepts – namely, the White House as a paranormal hub and that his little brother’s doll happens to be inhabited by a serial killer.
But it’s also in the way that “There Will Be Blood” goes for broke in ensuring it’s the bloodiest episode of the series to date. Considering how over-the-top and grisly Chucky’s kills can be, that’s saying a lot. Mancini and crew pay tribute to The Shining in inspired ways, and that only hints at a fraction of the bloodletting in this week’s new episode.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Chucky” can get away with splattering an insane amount of blood on the small screen because it’s counterbalanced with a wry sense of humor and campy narrative turns that are just as endearing and fun as the SFX. Moreover, it’s the fantastic cast that sells it all. In an episode where Brad Dourif makes a rare appearance on screen, cutting loose and having a blast in Chucky’s incorporeal form, his mischievous turn is matched by Tiffany facing her own mortality and Nica Pierce’s (Fiona Dourif) emotionally charged confrontation with her former captor.
There’s also Devon Sawa, who amusingly continues to land in Chucky’s crosshairs no matter the character. Season 3 began with Sawa as the deeply haunted but kind President Collins, and Sawa upstages himself as the unflappably upbeat and eager-to-please doppelganger Randall Jenkins. That this episode gives Sawa plenty to do on the horror front while playing his most likable character yet on the series makes for one of the episode’s bigger surprises.
The penultimate episode of “Chucky” Season 3 unleashes an epic bloodbath. It delivers scares, gore, and franchise fan service in spades, anchored by an appropriate scene-chewing turn by Dourif. That alone makes this episode a series highlight. But the episode also neatly ties together its characters and plot threads to pave the way for the finale. No matter how this season wraps up, it’s been an absolute pleasure watching Chucky destroy the White House from the inside.
“Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on USA & SYFY.
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