Under The Skin is a 2013 science fiction film about a mysterious young woman who seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland, leading her to begin a process of self-discovery.
By 2013, Scarlett Johansson was already a huge international star, having appeared already in two Marvel movies as Black Widow, not to mention a string of hits dating back to the late 90s that made her box office gold but established her as a bonafide screen sex symbol, even if that moniker is undoubtedly outdated. Her sophisticated presence and classic good looks, especially at celebrity events, made her iconic on the ‘red carpet,’ making fans swoon. She’d long made a career out of adapting her attractiveness into her meaty roles, managing to hold all the power yet still feel vulnerable. Few were doing sexy and dangerous as well as her. So it was surprising when she suddenly showed up in Jonathan Glazer‘s mind-bending sci-fi headtrip Under The Skin, where she literally stripped herself down to her most bare, revealing a side of her no one had ever seen.
THE STORY: Admittedly hard to describe, Under The Skin is set in Glasgow, where we first see a motorcyclist (Jeremy McWilliams) pick up what appears to be a dead woman on the side of the road, loading her into van. Inside, there is another woman (Johansson), nude, who takes the clothes from the other woman and puts them on. She then gets behind the wheel and drives into town where she spends her time picking up men, they thinking they might get some action. Little do they know, she’ll be the last thing they ever see. Without giving too many details, the unnamed woman brings them to ‘her’ house, where they – transfixed by her beauty – follow her into absolute ebony, sucked into a liquid abyss. So, yeah. Creepy and packed with all sort of interpretive possibilities. More so when the woman abandons that track and does some self exploration on her own.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Pretty much all you’ll be watching (mesmerized more like it) is Johansson herself, who barely speaks but so utterly captivates, it’s almost weirdly addictive. Much of the film was done with hidden cameras, especially as she picks up men on the street, filmed on location with non-actors, who Johansson approached with her van. Once knowing that, these scenes take on a whole new level of danger, and once played out to their end, really flip the expected of roles of who is safe to walk the streets at night alone.
Credit also goes to Glazer, who handles this delicate story with just the right amount of ambiguity for fans who crave deciphering movies and attention to details so that, if paying attention, there’s plenty here to keep viewers on track, even if several moments are incredibly heavy. This is a film about movement, discovery and transformation, ending in one of the most harrowing and tragic scenes in recent memory. It will having you asking myriad questions, with hopefully “what am I?” being the last.
A GREAT MOMENT: There’s a lot to unpack in Under The Skin, with a string of almost menacing ache in the woman’s (listed as ‘the female’) journey, where we first fear her and then empathize. That in itself is cinematic sleight of hand, but it’s the growth that holds us as we try to understand what she is and why she does what she does. And there’s no better (terrifying) moment than when the female comes upon a swimmer on a rocky, wave swept shore, her eye on the athletic young man. It looks like she’s about to lure her next victim into the darkness when the swimmer hears the cries of a distressed couple in the water.
He rushes into the waves and rescues a man, who then immediately heads back into the water to try and save his wife. Meanwhile, the swimmer, exhausted, collapses on the shore, leaving the pair to eventually drown. Not disconcerting enough, sitting on a blanket nearby is the couple’s infant, weeping in terror. WTF? It’s sensory overload for the female, and what she does (and doesn’t) is shocking, making this a truly unnerving moment. It’s really a stroke of mad movie genius on Glazer’s part for tapping so aggressively into our baser instincts, from a fear of drowning to the care of a baby. Everything is ‘wrong’ about this moment and because so, for reasons we sort of come to grips with later, it works like black magic.
THE TALLY: Under The Skin is not for everyone, yet it’s one of those movies that you really need to see, even if you come away not particularly ‘liking’ it. Films like this are not meant to be ‘liked’ because that’s not why they are made. They are made to challenge and incite, to force us to examine ourselves as well as what we think we’re seeing. Who is this female? Why has she come here? Who is the real monster? This is hardly a movie experience at all, not in any traditional sense, the film a taxing, chilling, deeply affecting piece of art that cuts to the bone and inspires the best thing any movie possibly could: conversation. It’s What To Watch.