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. Continue reading “Under the Skin”