SKINAMARINK (2023)

Effort applauded, but Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink is a sluggish bore that doesn’t earn the patience from the viewers that it demands, failing to deliver expected rewards.

In Skinamarink, two young children wake up to find that all of the windows and doors in their home are gone and their father is nowhere to be found. I’m a bit baffled at the sensation that this film has reportedly become online with many hailing it as the next great thing, Ball being the next big voice in horror. Skinamarink is thin on plot and heavy on long camera shots of nothing, the attempts at building suspense and creepiness plagued with monotony and dissipating interest. Viewers will watch with great anticipation of a massive pay-off only to find that no such thing exists. There comes a time when being thin on plot works against the film and isn’t some genius approach to storytelling; perhaps there just wasn’t much to explore here.

I won’t write Ball off this early in his career, but this isn’t the groundbreaking work being whispered about in the corners of social media. Skinamarink comes across half-baked, a lazy outing that succeeds mostly at putting viewers to sleep with a run time that is far too long. If I am going to be asked to commit, I’m going to need some more plot points as a blank canvas provides zero inkling as to the intent of the filmmaker, the message(s) at the film’s core, and the “why” of it all. I suspect that staring at white walls may prove more entertaining.

Skinamarink is now playing in limited theaters and hits Shudder in February.

Rating: 1/5