Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 10 (Skinamarink)

Right away, I knew that I had to go a little extra with this film in order to create a memorable and intriguing aesthetic experience with it. It all stemmed from the fun little fact that it got a limited edition release on VHS, of all things. I did not have the cash to pony up for one of those tapes, so I made my own. I attained a digital copy of the film, ran it through a video editor to get it in an acceptable format, popped it on a USB drive, put that into a PS3 hooked into a VCR via AV cables, and then played the movie while recording it onto tape. This only got the visual aesthetic, and I needed to do one more thing to really get the effect to work. I went down into my basement with that same VCR hooked to a CRT, and late at night I turned off all the lights and sat back to watch the resultant tape. So it was, then, in illuminated blackness, that I let this wash over me.

Before we get into the film, I would like to share with you two similar stories from my childhood. I could not have been more than 6 or 7 years old when these occurred, and they both involve me waking up in the middle of the night. In the first, I awoke to a house that still had all the lights on but no Mom or Dad around. They were out doing something, and had figured I would just sleep right through their absence. I did not, and the sheer terror of being Alone In The House for the very first time is a memory that's stuck with me. The second is me waking up once again, needing to use the bathroom. While I had slept, there was a power outage and the lights did not work so I could not go. You may wonder why I'm bringing up random nighttime anxieties from a couple of decades ago. Such things are tantamount to what I got out of this film. Such things are what that film is all about.

Skinamarink is many things at once, but the one thing it is not is a traditional film. There is no fancy plot, no three-act structure, no detailed lore explanation for what is happening here (no matter how many goddamn Youtube videos attempt to do such a thing). This is almost an experimental film in many ways, a full-on example of vibes-based storytelling and chasing the unique aesthetic of dimly lit shots of a suburban house at night. Its refusal to be anything traditional can blindside many, and it makes the film what I like to dub a "picket fence film"; that is to say, a film where the Letterboxd ratings graph has a nearly equal amount of ratings for every star possible, from 1/2 to 5. A film that is equally beloved and berated. 

If you are expecting a traditional film, something with a narrative and an arc and an explanation, or you just can't plain vibe with it, then you are going to get jack shit out of this experience other than annoyance and boredom. I get it. I honestly get it more than I do the continued hate and backlash over Halloween Ends for not being what was expected. It's one thing when you whinge about not getting your epic final slasher villain battle. It's another when you go into a movie expecting, you know, a usual movie. If you don't go in knowing what this is, it's understandable that you can't vibe with it. 

I can, however, vibe with it. In a dark basement in 2023, I vibed with what this was doing. It's almost a Rorschach test, in a way. It is a movie about childhood nightmares, of sleepless nights, of the terrors lurking within your little child brain that only come out when the sun comes down. The people behind it had their own childhood nightmares that they see in the film. I have my own which I see in the film, which I told you about. That's why the lore explanation thing drives me mad: do you wake up from a nightmare and then nitpick your own imagination's plot holes? No! God no! This thing, this 100 minutes of whatever it is, is an ambient terror that reflects the darkest parts of your childhood subconscious, spitting it back out in a visual form that resonates with everyone in a different way. All I can do is tell you how it resonated with me, how it made me remember the night I woke up and my Mom and Dad weren't there. The night that the power went and the toilet might as well have vanished into inky blackness. Every spooky night, every terror from my dreams I never told anyone about, all of it pondered as scratchy audio on a videocassette shows me a deserted hallway, flickering with the light of a CRT as I too bathe in the flickering light of a CRT. All of this and more were pondered as I lay in that darkness, letting whatever this was wash over me.

Sweet dreams, kids.