IN THIS HOUSE...
"Where did they go?"
— Kaylee, referring to the doors and windows of her home
Skinamarink is an independent horror film written, directed, edited, and crowdfunded by Kyle Edward Ball. It premiered at Fantasia Film Festival in July 2022, was released in theaters in North America on January 13, 2023, and was also released on the streaming platform Shudder on February 2. The director’s short film Heck (2020) is a proof of concept for this movie.
Kaylee and Kevin are two children who live with their father. One night, their father makes a phone call, and states that Kevin recovered well from a fall down the stairs. By the time what should be morning rolls around, it seems to still be night time. Kaylee and Kevin can't really tell because all windows and doors in the house have vanished, along with their father. They camp out in front of the TV with their toys and wait for him to return, but it seems that they're not alone...
Skinamarink provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- A possible interpretation of the children's mother. Kaylee refuses to talk about her and she seems to be somehow related to the villain. Like many things in the film, this is left uncomfortably ambiguous.
- It's also a prevalent theory that the father is lying when he tells someone that Kevin fell down the stairs, which is a popular excuse for explaining away bruises resulting from familial violence.
- The entity itself behaves like a parental authority. It has "control" over the house, which it cruelly lords over the children, giving them arbitrary and even harmful orders then punishing them if they disobey.
- Ambiguously Evil: Kevin and Kaylee's mother is periodically hinted at to be an antagonistic figure, but to what degree and why is heavily unclear. She doesn't appear to live with the rest of the family, and when Kevin wonders aloud if their missing father perhaps "went with mom", Kaylee nervously replies "I don't want to talk about mom." She (or at least something that resembles her) suddenly appears when Kaylee explores her dad's bedroom, but all she does is gently tell her "Your father and me... we love you and Kevin very much," before disappearing. To make things even more complicated, she (or whatever is impersonating her) appears to quietly sit down beside Kevin as he sleeps, but later events show whatever entity Kevin is trapped with actively and maliciously torturing him. The framing makes it ambiguous if the evil entity and the maternal figure are one and the same or not, and whether or not the latter is supposed to be the children's literal mother remains unanswered.
- Analog Horror: Skinamarink definitely borrows a lot from the genre: the film grain, the nineties setting, the focus on liminal spaces, and a villain of unclear origin and power.
- And I Must Scream: The fate of both children, seemingly. Kaylee even loses her mouth just like the trope namer.
- Alien Geometries: The house becomes warped beyond coherence after the timeskip. Hallways are nightmarishly long and lead nowhere, doors are twelve feet tall, and parts of the house appear to be floating in a disembodied void.
- Big Bad: The nameless, faceless entity that has taken over the house serves as our antagonist. Manifesting almost exclusively as a disembodied voice, it is seemingly all-powerful within the confines of the house and capriciously, pointlessly cruel, tormenting the defenseless child protagonists for seemingly no reason at all.
- Black Comedy: The scene where a bucket is pushed where the toilet was, prompting one of the characters to matter-of-factly say "gross" gets one of the rare intentional laughs that's had audiences in stitches.
- The Blank: Kaylee is turned into this by the entity, becoming a sort of human version of the family's windowless, door-less house. Later, this happens to all of the children's family photos as well.
- Broken Record:
- In the trailer
, the announcer just repeats "In this house..." over and over again with slight changes in pitch. - This is seemingly one of the signs that the entity is present, as the TV will suddenly start looping the same few seconds over and over again. Later, this also happens with whatever the fuck is happening to Kevin that's causing blood to splatter all over the carpet.
- In the trailer
- Cat Scare:
- While observing her doll floating in the air, Kaylee suddenly drops her flashlight and screams. Turns out, she was only reacting to Kevin startling her.
- There's a moment where as Kevin wanders through the dark halls, we get a shot of near-total darkness sans a very faint pair of eyes suddenly staring right at you. Then Kevin shines a flashlight on it, and it turns out it's just a toy phone with a cartoon face. But then Kevin turns off the flashlight and it becomes clear those are NOT the same eyes. Kevin turns the flashlight back on and but it's just the toy phone again. And then its face suddenly contorts.
- Chekhov's Gag: A very dark version of a "gag": in one instance of the kids falling asleep in front of their TV, the cartoon that they're watching suddenly begins skipping and repeating a short segment over and over, including its audio. After the 572-day Time Skip, we get a shot of blood splattering over a carpet, un-splattering, and re-splattering, accompanied by a distorted version of the same whimsical sound effects from the cartoon. The implications of what's happening in this reality are... not pleasing.
- Children Are Innocent: Played for horror and heartbreak: Kaylee and Kevin are simply too young to understand the gravity of some of the things that happen to them, so some of their early reactions to things like the windows and doors disappearing come off as rather subdued compared to what an adult in the same situation might have. Mind you, they still understand that something is wrong, but with no adults to guide them, all they have is their gut reactions to the increasingly disturbing events they're subject to, with mild worry turning into bona fide terror.
- Closed Circle: The house is an extreme example, with all the windows and doors literally disappearing overnight. While the electricity initially remains functioning, the lights gradually begin to fail and eventually leaves the glow of the Television as one of the only remaining sources of light in the home. At one point, Kevin does get through to a police dispatcher, but then the entity turns the phone into a toy.
- Cut Phone Lines: A supernatural example. One of the first things Kaylee tries to do once she realizes something is wrong is try to call someone (presumably their mother) and then the police for help. Both attempts fail with the dial tone being replaced by a droning buzz. Kevin tries again later in the film and does manage to get through to the police, but the entity turns the phone in to a toy midway through the call.
- Darkness Equals Death: The house is dark, what with the lack of windows and doors to the outside — while the film starts at the dead of night, there comes a point in time where even the children wonder if it should be morning, but they don't even get the benefit of natural sunlight. As a result, there are many passages featuring shots of very dark rooms only lit by flashlights, the faint glow of a television, or some other ambiguous ambient source that slowly fade as the horrors progress. Some of the most uncomfortable moments feature shots that are almost entirely dark, but last long enough that your eyes begin to adjust and you start to notice something just sitting there...
- Deliberate VHS Quality: Released in 2022, the film has an especially grainy, lofi look to it, adding to the ambiguous and unsettling atmosphere of the experience. Kyle Edward Ball confirmed the film was shot digitally, with the grain being an effect added in post-production.
- Downer Ending: There is no escape from the house, and the children are either dead or being tortured for all eternity by the entity.
- Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: As we almost never see the children's faces and the low light and tight shots make it hard to see each child's clothing, one can tell who is whom as Kevin wears socks whereas Kaylee goes barefoot.
- Drone of Dread: The dial tone on the landline phone turns into this when Kaylee tries to call someone at the beginning of the movie, becoming a loud, nauseating buzz.
- Crystal-Ball Scheduling: The cartoons on the television seem to parallel what is happening to the children:
- A cartoon of two children falling asleep and being transported into a dreamscape as Kevin and Kaylee are getting used to sleeping in their new always-night environment.
- Another depicts crows having a funeral after Kaylee says "Why is mom crying?"
- Most notable is the "Presto Chango" cartoon, showing a rabbit that changes shape and disappears altogether. Not only does the cartoon foreshadow the phone scene and ending, but it also mirrors the powers of the demonic entity in the house. The figure on the bed fading away at the end of the film fades in an upward wipe reminiscent of the Presto Chango rabbit disappearing.
- Evil Is Not Well-Lit: The Entity seems to create unnatural darkness wherever it goes. For one, it always seems to be night after it logically should have seen the sun rise, even with the windows and doors gone. As a result, the film is shot in very low light.note
- Evil Is Petty: The entity will punish the kids in the most horrific ways if they don't want to "play" with it. It takes away poor Kaylee's eyes and mouth, and makes the terrified Kevin put a knife in his eye for not immediately obeying the command to go into the kitchen. It's not like it even has a valid reason to reprimand them, considering it can make them do anything anyway.
- Evil Laugh: The closest the Entity comes to showing emotion is a long, raspy, mocking laugh upon interrupting Kevin's attempt to call for help and him asking it how it did that, and it lets another one out when it is doing a "Groundhog Day" Loop of it killing one of the children over and over.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The entity speaks in a deep whisper that's often so distorted it's difficult to understand what it's saying without subtitles.
- Eye Scream: At one point, the entity commands Kevin to put a knife in his eye. We don't see it directly, but we're treated to bloodstains and Kevin's crying in the background.
- Face-Revealing Turn: Multiple are set up:
- When Kaylee investigates her father's bedroom, a humanoid figure that appears to be the father is seen sitting up on the side of the bed facing away from her, and when she approaches, he requests her to look under the bed. She doesn't see anything, but when she looks back up, she instead sees a woman that appears to be her mother sitting in the same position. She exchanges a few words to Kaylee, asking her to close her eyes, but when Kaylee reopens her eyes... she's gone again.
- Later as Kevin is drawn to the basement, he finds Kaylee, saying that she's scared and feels strange, leading in with a shot of her laying down on the ground in darkness. Hard cut to reveal that her eyes and mouth are completely missing.
- Even later on, as Kevin wakes up in a panic following his presumed Eye Scream, a figure that appears to be the mother figure from before walks in and gently sits down beside him, but the only proper angle we get of her is the back of her head. Nothing immediately comes of this as Kevin instead bolts for the phone.
- The Faceless: Nobody's face is ever seen except one instance with Kevin, and only occasionally are their bodies even glimpsed- usually, they are represented through their footsteps, shadows, or off-screen actions. In fact, one of the rare times we do get a clear look at a character, the key features of her face are missing.
- Faux Affably Evil: The entity has a single moment like this. Shortly after Kaylee's disappearance, it drags all the Legos and toys it had stuck to the wall back onto the floor and tells Kevin "I want to play." Very shortly afterwards it forces him into a self-inflicted Eye Scream.
- Near the end, when Kevin quietly asks "can we just watch something happy", the Entity seems to oblige...and shows him the front door of their house. Something that would, and perhaps after all the time that's past the only thing that could inspire any happiness or joy: an exit from this hell he and his sister have been in for two years. But, of course, this is just a façade. It's just letting him "watch" something happy. It's not actually going to let them go. There is no escape.
- Flat Character: No one in the family really has an arc to speak of, and they're pretty slightly developed. The audience doesn't even get to know what they look like.
- From Bad to Worse: Happens in quick succession in the first act: First the children find their father is gone and the doors and windows to their home have vanished, then the lights begin to fail and the home gradually falls to darkness, and then the children realize something else is there with them too. The capper is Kaylee's disappearance halfway through the film, leaving the Entity to focus on torturing Kevin.
- Gainax Ending: The film's ending is even more oblique and strange than the rest of it, and that's saying something. The architecture of the house seems to have broken down completely, Kaylee's fate is extremely ambiguous, and Kevin has been stuck inside with the nameless evil thing for over a year. We see what may be the face of the monster, but it's obscured and refuses to give its name, instead demanding that Kevin go to sleep. And then the film ends. Borders on No Ending.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The entity forces Kevin to stab himself in the eye, and after the Time Skip repeatedly does something to him that causes blood to drench the carpet, but we never see the actual act. We do hear Kevin's bloodcurdling screams though.
- Hell Is That Noise: There are numerous strange sounds from cryptic sources. Considering that the protagonists are isolated children, it's unsurprising this takes its toll.
- Hope Spot: Kevin manages to make a call to the police, but the entity turns the phone into a toy halfway through the call.
- I Want My Mommy!: Late in the film, during the scene of blood splashing and un-splashing onto the carpet as we vaguely hear what sounds like Kevin screaming, we get a single silent subtitle strongly implied to be from Kevin: "mommy". Considering the ambiguity surrounding his relationship with his mother, one has to wonder if he's calling out for her for a specific reason, or if it's just a desperate reflex admidst all the horror he's facing.
- Impeded Communication: As soon as the children discover that not only have the windows and doors to the outside disappeared, so has their father, they to call someone on the phone (either 911 or possibly their mother or another family member), but can't get it to work, instead resulting in an ominous droning noise. Later, Kevin makes another attempt at a 911 call and successfully reaches someone on the other end, but as soon as the dispatcher tells him "the adults are on the way," the call suddenly dies, with Kevin noticing the phone has inexplicably become a toy.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Played with. Kaylee apparently disappears after her face is stolen, but the villain speaks of her as if she's still alive. Kevin is also apparently still alive by the end of the film, but may have been severely injured or even killed and brought back to life several times.
- Infinite Flashlight: Played for horror. Even after an unnaturally long period of use by characters who likely aren't even able to replace the batteries, flashlights that the characters heavily rely on to see much of anything still work.
- Leave the Camera Running: Many shots are of different parts of the house, including closeups on the ceiling, carpeted floor, and even just ones of total darkness. Most of the time, nothing happens during these scenes. Most of the time.
- Jump Scare: There's a few especially pronounced ones, such as Kaylee trying to find her mother in her room, only to be met with an inhuman squeal, and later on with Kevin discovering Kaylee's eyeless and mouthless face. In general, the film's minimalist cinematography and editing causes even basic shot transitions to come across as this. With cameras remaining in static positions for long periods of time, simple shot-to-shot becomes jarring, especially as the night goes on and rooms become more ambiguous, surreal, and darkly-lit, making new sights even more unsettling.
- Mature Work, Child Protagonists: While their father and mother are briefly seen, the two child characters are the main protagonists of this movie. Part of the horror that goes on comes from the kids being simply too young to understand how dire their situation is once the Entity shows up. The only other adult in the film besides the parents is a 911 operator that Kevin calls partway through the film. And given that the Entity is a Reality Warper, said operator might not even be real.
- Mind Screw: How and why did the doors and windows disappear? What happened with the children's parents, and why doesn't Kaylee want to talk about their mother? What is the entity that's tormenting them, and how much of what's going on is directly its fault? And that's not even getting to the questions raised by the last ten minutes of the film, where things really start to break down.
- Minimalism: Skinamarink gives films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity a run for their moneynote in just how stripped-down you can make a horror film — the cast is extremely limited and most of the time are barely visible, the setting is limited to a single household, there's very little active visuals and camera movement, the storytelling is raw and heavily ambiguous, and even the actual scares aren't nearly as graphic as the implied subject matter suggests. Despite this, its surreal presentation and immersive atmosphere makes it no less haunting.
- Minimalist Cast: Only six characters total (Kaylee, Kevin, their mother, their father, the entity, and the phoneline operator), and only four are credited.
- The Night That Never Ends: The house continues to be in complete, pitch-black darkness even long after the children are sure that morning must have come. Since all of the windows are gone, it’s not like there’s any way for sunlight to get through, after all.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- There are relatively long periods between overtly horrific moments, and moments where there is even part of a character on screen are sparse.
- For a good chunk of the film, all there is to see is grainy darkness. Evil Is Not Well-Lit is in full effect here, as the overwhelming darkness of the movie is only lit sparingly, and what is easily visible is usually unsettling.
- Two points in the movie have explicitly violent things happening. Both times, the camera doesn't show the subject of the violence anywhere on-screen, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine what's happening instead. In one instance, the Entity forces Kevin to put a knife in his own eye, complete with Kevin screaming in pain. In another instance, there's a splattering sound as blood coats part of the scene, but is then instantly cleaned up, only to splatter across the scene again.
- No Name Given: The entity in the house is never identified with a name, if it even has one, and when Kevin directly asks for it, it simply ignores him. Also, Kevin and Kaylee’s parents, although they presumably do have names.
- Object Ceiling Cling: Played for horror. In the first instance, Kaylee notices that one of her dolls is inexplicably stuck on the ceiling. While processing that, she gets scared by the entering Kevin, who ends up distracting her from the doll. Near the end of the film, the entity makes Kevin close his eyes and then lifts him up onto the ceiling, after which it starts dragging him away into... somewhere.
- Pocket Dimension: One theory for where the children are and why it's perpetually nighttime. There may also be separate pocket dimensions for each child after Kaylee's face is wiped. She disappears from the film at that point but may be the figure dissolving on the bed in the finale.
- P.O.V. Cam: Most of the movie is shot from very high or low unusual angles that are nothing like how a human would generally view the scenes as they occur, yet there are a handful of scenes shot handheld to better simulate first person perspective from one of the characters.
- Present-Day Past: A minor case occurs with the LEGO toys filmed in the movie—several of the brick pieces visible did not exist in LEGO's repertoire in 1995, having not been designed and added to its parts catalogue yet.
- The Public Domain Channel: The protagonists watch a lot of cartoons, all of which happen to be in the public domain. This makes sense, given the movie's 90s setting, because at the time, bargain bin VHS tapes of public domain cartoons were a cheap sale for video production companies.
- Reality Warper: The entity seems to have the ability to rearrange the house and its inhabitants at will.Kevin: How did you do that?
Entity: I can do anything I want. - Rule of Symbolism:
- Most of the cartoons shown throughout the movie have a recurring motif of two helpless protagonists tormented by an all-powerful antagonist seemingly for its own amusement, not unlike Kevin and Kaylee's very own predicament. They also foreshadow some of the entity's powers, including its apparent ability to rewind time.
- The kids appear to be fond of Legos, and have built a crude structure out of them which they can be seen reshaping in early sequences of the movie. The entity has the ability to treat the house itself as a similar toy.
- Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: The setting of the film is what appears to be an average suburban household, but the plot is kickstarted when the windows and doors to the outside suddenly disappear without explanation, instead being replaced by more walls. Even the toilet disappears, presumably due to its plumbing connecting to the outside world.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: In between the tense or horrifying events occurring elsewhere in the house, we always cut back to the still, dark, dreadful air of the living room scored by the lively, whimsical music of the golden age cartoons playing on TV.
- The Stoic: Even considering naivety, several critics have pointed out how Kaylee and Kevin take their horrific circumstances with much less emotion than they would realistically exhibit practically from the beginning of the supernatural occurrences. This could be read as the children simply not having the maturity to properly assess the severity of what's happening to them, or perhaps it's related to the film's themes of abuse and neglect, and that whether for reasons supernatural or mundane, they've become conditioned to accept the horrors as they are.
- Surreal Horror: The goings-on of the movie are hard to describe even as a paranormal occurrence. The furniture and exits of the house vanish, the children's parents appear and disappear, walls restructure themselves, objects stick to walls, and Kaylee even loses her face.
- Time Master: The villain, considering the looping cartoon clips, blood splatter, and how Kevin is implicitly still alive long after he should have died of malnutrition.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The film received a wide release in 2023, and is set in 1995.
- Uncertain Doom: Kaylee vanishes after the midway point of the film, with her last appearance showing that the entity has removed her eyes and mouth. While it implies that she's still alive at the finale of the film, her ultimate fate is left ambiguous.
- The Unintelligible: The entity's voice has so much distortion and reverb on it that, unless it's subtitled, it's almost impossible to make out what it's saying. The effect is rather similar to EVP recordings of ghosts.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: A justified case. Kevin and Kaylee react to their initial situation, with the doors and windows of the house disappearing, the phone no longer working, and them no longer being able to keep track with how time is progressing, with mild bewilderment and confusion. Being a four and (possibly) six year-old child respectively, they're simply too young to fully grasp the direness of their situation.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The film opens with the audience learning that Kevin had been taken to the doctors after hurting his head, supposedly from falling down the stairs while sleepwalking. While one can extrapolate and analyze their own theories from the scene, the film otherwise never directly acknowledges or refers to these elements ever again.
- Wham Line:
- One for those who don't know whose face lost its eyes and mouth.
Entity: Kaylee didn't do as she was told. She said she wanted her mom and dad. So I took her mouth away.- One of the biggest shocks in the movie doesn't come from a noise or an image, it's just a two words of on-screen text.572 Days
- Wham Shot: Given the film's minimalist editing and propensity towards sudden, abrupt cuts, there are several:
- Early in the film, Kaylee and Kevin investigate a loud noise coming from the dining room, with the next shot revealing the source; one of the dining chairs inexplicably standing on the ceiling.
- The entity beckons for Kevin to come to the second floor, where his light goes out. After a long period of darkness, Kevin's flashlight comes back on again, except he's now standing on the ceiling.
- Upon the entity's insistence, Kevin crawls to the other end of the hallway and enters the bedroom, where he's seemingly grabbed and dragged away... and away... and away.
- Word Salad Title: "Skinamarink" (also spelled as "Skinnamarink" or "Skidamarink") is the name of an old children's song, but the song never even appears in the film, and its nonsense title is never otherwise referred to.
- Would Hurt a Child: The villain would. Many times, possibly for eternity.
"Go to sleep."
"...What's your name?"
"...What's your name?"
