Rob Haskins

Spoilers: I saw it today on the big screen, having seen a pirated copy online. The visual quality is very lo-fi, but the sound design is really not. There were all sorts of creaking and stepping noises to my immediate left—I don't think I was imaging them. Hardly any dialogue. Some of it has subtitles because it's so distorted, but some key lines didn't have them and I wish they had. If you're expecting a neat, tidy little plot, don't go. (You will feel like the many people who left it a one-star review.) I went to a matinee and there were three people in the audience. One left about 2/3 of the way through. The plot, such as it is, concerns two kids who wake up to find their father is missing. Then they find all the doors and windows disappear. The TV is on playing public domain vintage cartoons with very, very creepy music. Sometime later on, mom and dad return briefly, but it doesn't help matters much. There is something in the house with the kids. We never really see it (maybe at the end), and we don't really know why it's there or what it wants. Things don't go well for the kids. The film could have ended at several points but kept going, and the actual end wasn't any more effective than the possible early endings. A couple of sudden jump scares made mostly by sound design. Creepy, trippy photography. A slowly increasing feeling of dread and helplessness. I will watch it again when it comes out on Shudder, but not sure that I need to see it a second time in theaters. But it's unlike any movie I've ever seen with the possible exception of Lynch's Eraserhead and Jarman's The Angelic Conversation (though the latter isn't a horror movie in any way). Give me Skinamarink over a hollywood blockbuster any day of the week.