Skinamarink: Dream a Little Dream of THIS HOUSE

Filmed in his parent’s house in Edmonton on a budget less than that of the The Blair Witch Project, Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink is an experimental, divisive film that’s been blowing up through an electrifying festival run and viral word-of-mouth. The setup is simple: Two kids wake up in the middle of the night to find their parents missing, the windows and doors in their house have disappeared, and something is calling to them from the dark corners of their home.

Some reviews say that it’s nothing but shots of doorways and carpet, an exercise in tedium broken by the occasional jump scare. Others say that it’s a masterpiece in nightmarish tension, reflecting childhood terror like no other. For me, it’s one of the scariest fucking movies I’ve ever seen, capturing the feelings of my childhood nightmares like nothing else.

The first time I watched it, there were points where I was watching through my fingers and I was getting an ice-cold chill down my spine every time the kids left the safety of their TV-lit sanctuary in the den. The second time I watched it, I was riveted to the screen, my heart pounding and eyes wide open to suck in every detail of the churning, grainy darkness. I’ve been scared by movies before, be it a jump-scare shock from something like the radio scene in The Night House, or feeling soul-wrenching despair watching Toni Colette wail in Hereditary. Still, nothing has hit me quite like Skinamarink. I felt like a kid again, waking up in the night in some state between dreaming and consciousness, trying to fall back asleep and ignore my brain telling me something was standing in the corner or the house creaking was a voice talking to me. 

For the kids in the film, falling asleep offers no respite, no waking up to the sun or the smell of breakfast in the kitchen. They wake up to the same couches and the same TV playing the same old cartoons on a loop. This aspect of the film mirrors something I’ve noticed in my dreams, a feeling like time is stretching out to lengths that feel impossible after I’ve woken up. The beginning section of the movie feels almost mundane despite the things happening around the kids. Ball lets us get settled into this new situation just like the kids do: they set up in the den downstairs on the couches with blankets and toys, setting the big CRT TV to looping old cartoons. They play with their Legos, eat cereal for every meal, reckon with what to do when the toilet disappears, and fall asleep to their cartoons. For a while, things are comfy and you might let your guard down some. 

I couldn’t totally relax because I was scanning every shadowy corner of every shot like a forensic detective, looking for some hidden thing ready to snatch these kids away. Skinamarink is a very dark movie in a lot of ways, especially visually. Shots will hold on dark corners or empty doorways or give us just barely enough light to make out vague shapes, but never give enough clarity to let you relax. This darkness is enhanced by the heavy film grain laid over everything, turning those corners and doorways into churning pools that our pattern-seeking brains recoil at. That particular feeling hit me hard as I remember multiple times waking up in the dark as a kid, my night light casting shadows around my room but never putting out enough light that my eyes could adjust. I’ve always had an overactive imagination and that worked to scare the shit out of me when I was younger. The thought of going out of my room into the rest of the house at night would terrify me and make the trip to my parent’s room seem fraught with imaginary terrors that would melt out of the darkness to get at me. 

I’m the type of person that doesn’t remember their dreams but I feel like I’ve dreamed something like Skinamarink in the past. This feeling is apparently pretty common when looking at Ball’s previous work on his YouTube channel “Bitesized Nightmares” where people would send him descriptions of nightmares they’ve had and he would produce 2-3 minute long vignettes portraying those submissions. The dream of “my parents are gone and I’m alone/trapped in my house” was common enough that he was able to take that general idea and turn it into his first feature. If Kyle can terrify me with a low budget and simple effects, I cannot wait to see what he does with more assets at his disposal. Whatever his next project is, I’ll be first in line for it.