Under the Skin

There are two types of surreal terror in the trippy, experimental sci-fi “Under the Skin.”

In the first, Scarlett Johansson seduces lonely men on the streets, brings them back to a dark, rundown home, and once inside, the confines become an empty, dark void. She disrobes, the men dutifully follow, and as they approach her, they silently slip into a pool of nothingness, completely enveloped by the darkness. As they sink, they don’t struggle, or even break eye contact. They simply vanish, soon to become nothing more than a snake-like shell.

In the second form, Johansson tries her trick again at a beach. Off in the distance, a man watches as his wife is drowning and flailing in a choppy sea. He hurries to save her, but ends up drowning himself. The man Johansson is seducing uses all his strength to save them both, and Johansson then knocks him out cold and begins dragging him away. Sitting alone on the beach is the couple’s baby, wailing all through the night, perhaps never to be claimed.

“Under the Skin” is less a film but an experience, one that combines the grimly fantastical and the grimly mundane to make something that is as much human as it is alien. Jonathan Glazer’s film captures the kaleidoscopic images that made “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Vertigo” genre bending classics, but this aural/visual experience is largely unlike any film ever made. It’s a mostly plotless yet immersive movie with impressive power and dramatic tension.

The film begins in a sort of eclipse, with strings fretting and scurrying in Mica Levi’s otherworldly score. A motorcyclist rockets down the highway, the camera strapped to the top of his helmet in an added act of surrealism. He steps off on the side of the road where a crash has occurred, walks off-road and returns with a dead woman draped over his shoulder.

Cut to yet another astral plane. The woman is lying on the ground, if there was a “ground” to visualize, as a nude Johansson purposefully strips her and dons her clothes. She then is seen driving around Scotland in a seedy van, stopping to observe men, briefly flirt and ask for directions. Those who have nowhere to be, she picks up and brings back to her lair for devouring.

What’s immediately groundbreaking about the film is the way in which it was made. Hidden cameras were strapped inside the vehicle, and Johansson drove around polling random men for directions. In a wig and with a Scottish accent, the men don’t know whom they’re speaking to, or that they’re being filmed. And best of all is Johansson, who performs beautifully and on the fly in each chance encounter.

Some of these conversations, once put into context of Johansson’s intentions, are remarkably unsettling. We wonder if our courtesy and our ability to interact with others makes us human, but Johansson’s character demonstrates how even that can be replicated.

Glazer however doesn’t put as blunt of a point on it. The film wanders and observes, absorbing the thick accents and local color before taking a handful of more surreal turns. It only begins to form a plot with the presence of the “cleaner” on the motorcycle and when Johansson finds herself altered by one of her prey. “Under the Skin” gets increasingly curious as she’s separated from her one purpose in life and becomes wordless and nearly catatonic. She studies her body, feels pain and experiences fear for the first real time.

“Under the Skin” is a wonderfully studious, patient and observant film for a mind bender. It takes you up in its terrifying spell but doesn’t simply aim to scare or entrance. It’s a supernatural work of art that affects you much further than just skin deep.

4 stars