Skinamarink (2022) | A Rinky-Dink Waste of Time
Skinamarink is a movie I likely would have never watched for a few reasons. For one, the trailer did little to make me interested. More damning, however, was my spouse’s vitriolic review of it that was filled with expletives about how terrible it was and how she regretted watching it after hearing that it was “one of the scariest new horror movies to see” on one of the podcasts she enjoys. She showed me ten minutes of it, and I agreed with her in disbelief that the movie’s whole experience was just like those ten minutes. So, why did I still end up watching it?
Pros
Under 90 minutes, even though it will feel much longer
Cons
There are no real characters, no plot, no discernible dialogue, and no reason for this movie to exist
The filters that are over everything to try to make the movie look and sound low-budget just look and sound cheap in a bad way
Occasional jump scares to remind you that it’s a horror movie do nothing to the experience
BORING
Plot & Thoughts
I refuse to extrapolate on the non-events of Skinamarink to write my own synopsis of what takes place over the course of the film. So, here’s a summary listed on IMDB.com:
“Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party. They play well worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while it becomes clear that something is watching over them.”
Other horror fans on the internet have expanded upon the minuscule details of the movie to suggest that one of the children is dreaming or dead and that this could all be imaginary. Whatever. I do not recommend watching Skinamarink, but if you decide to make my mistake, you would have to agree that, regardless of which synopsis is actually true, it’s all a stretch.
It is difficult to describe this movie as anything other than a waste of time. The experience of watching it is akin to going to a modern art museum and staring at a blank canvas that is listed for many thousands of dollars with a pretentious title, and then moving on to another poor attempt at art again and again for eighty minutes. There are long moments of silence or muffled thuds and scraping noises as the camera is pointed at the ground or the ceiling. Occasionally, someone will speak in a hushed tone that you can barely hear. What they say is either irrelevant or uninteresting and does nothing to move the nonexistent plot along. You never see any of the characters’ faces because the camera is always deliberately pointed at an angle that ensures anything in a room is only partially seen, including the television that is frequently playing old cartoons. A majority of Skinamarink’s experience is listening to the noises from these cartoons while nothing happens. Ever so rarely, there will be a jump scare with a face or something that lasts a few seconds, and then the movie goes back to doing jack sh**.
Skinamarink is a boring waste of time. I knew this already, but I still watched it. Why? It continues to show up in online lists as one of the scariest movies of the past five years. I wanted to be able to see it for myself so that I wasn’t just judging it and disagreeing with opinions based on only 10 minutes of footage. I was also willing to look past its issues if there was something special to the audio experience. One author praising Skinamarink suggested that even though it’s a “divisive” film, it’s really meant to be something enjoyed with the lights off and the volume cranked, suggesting that the haters didn’t have the right environment when they watched it. If the movie had some subtle noises or voices in its background that you could miss on a low volume, I was willing to give it credit where due. Well, that didn’t help it at all. It was just loud and boring in the dark.
I’m not sure what brand of brainwashed Kool-Aid these various review sites are drinking, but I’d love to know what’s in it so I can make sure that any creative projects I’m involved in get good reviews. I’d also love to know what the authors of these lists are thinking when they put Skinamarink on any list that is meant to be positively received—the only thing you can remark that it did well was make its money back.
TL;DR
Less than ten minutes into Skinamarink, I knew I had made a terrible mistake in deciding to watch it. It is a boring, incoherent, uneventful eighty minutes that isn’t even worth putting on in the background. Do not give it the time of day, and do not fall for the lies of these online authors singing its praises. It sucks.
