A24’s Under the Skin has been out long enough that I consider the image above to be a minor spoiler from what I believe to be the scariest scene from an alien-themed horror film since Fire In the Sky.
In Robert Lieberman’s 1993 Fire In the Sky, a man is abducted by aliens and subjected to awful experiments. The imagery is haunting, chilling, and terrifying. Ultimately, his inability to move is what sent the chills straight down my spine. You can watch the sequence for yourself in the below video.
Last night I finally caught Jonathan Glazer’s masterful Under the Skin, in which Scarlett Johansson plays an alien seducing men into her lair where she strips them of their skin (presumably for other aliens wear to Earth reader Philip Hansen tells me that, in the book, they eat the meat). There’s a lot of build up to this mortifying sequence, which is carries heavily by the score, that I consider to be the scariest thing I’ve seen since Paranormal Activity. Clearly this is just my opinion, and some of you will probably disagree, but I was severely affected by the moment in which we see how a human’s skin is obtained. The above photo teases this scene, which I hope lives up to the hype that I’m dropping right now…
Check out the film this weekend and drop back here to share your thoughts. Is it the scariest alien scene since Fire In the Sky?
Photo source: A24 and Lionsgate.
Updated July 8, 2014