Skinamarink is a micro-budget horror movie that premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Canada. The film hails from first-time moviemaker Kyle Edward Ball, who started his career by collecting nightmares. According to a Variety report, people would comment on his YouTube channel with their nightmares, which he would recreate.

A description of Skinamarink has been provided, which reads:

“The most commonly shared one was basically the same concept: ‘I’m between the ages of 6 to 10. I’m in my house. My parents are either dead or missing, and there’s a threat I have to deal with.’ I was interested in that because I have a vivid nightmare from that time, too. I thought it was amazing that almost everyone seems to have this dream, so I wanted to explore this thing. I just ran with it and turned it into a movie.”

The budget for the film consisted of $15,000, which was primarily raised through crowdfunding. To make every dollar count, Ball shot for free in his childhood home in Edmonton, Canada, and borrowed equipment from the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta. The latter of which is a non-profit co-op that helps independent filmmakers.

“A savvy blend of traditional narrative and art film, Skinamarink is much more focused on atmosphere and sound design than actors or a dense mythology. With visuals that combine David Lynch’s low-fi style from Inland Empire with the aesthetic of dusty ’70s family movies pulled from the attic, it’s a claustrophobic hallucination that blends the scariest ideas from childhood into a dreamy, dreadful experience.”

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Unlike 1999’s The Blair Witch Project and 2007’s Paranormal Activity, two previous micro-budget horror movies that have become quite well-known, Skinamarink is not a found-footage film. Instead of hammering out a story in the editing room, Ball’s film was fully scripted in advance.

“I joke with people that, ‘We made it for the price of a premium pre-owned vehicle.”

Each shot was carefully composed to add depth and fear to harness the limitations. Ball and his late assistant director Joshua Bookhalter, to whom the film is dedicated, utilized creative shots and staging to imply movement and horror just out of sight offscreen, resulting in a movie consisting of unconventional viewpoints and angles. The kind that would be influenced by seeing through the eyes of two central children and the unknown presence spying on them.

RELATED: Why Low Budget Effects Work Well in Horror

The Reception to Skinamarink

     BayView Entertainment

Unfortunately, due to a technical issue during one of Skinamarink’s at-home screenings during its festival run, the film was made available to be pirated, despite assurances from the platform that it would be safe. Ball said he thinks people were under the impression that they didn’t have a distribution plan, which they did, so pirating it was doing him a favor. He also spoke about the mixed feelings he’s had over the situation.

As the pirated version spread, so did the reactions on social media. Several TikTok users deemed it the scariest movie ever. Reddit posts with frenzied titles started heated debates. YouTube videos on the film popped up every day. And on Letterboxd’s “Top 50 Horror Films of 2022,” Skinamarink is sitting at No. 12. Ahead of both The Black Phone (No.20) and Bodies Bodies Bodies (No.15).

“Since it’s been pirated, it’s been difficult, because no filmmaker wants to tsk tsk someone who’s saying, ‘Oh my God, I love your movie,’ right? At the end of the day, I am happy that someone saw my film and it touched them. Obviously, I would have preferred they see it through a more legitimate means, because that does affect me and that does affect the other people who have helped with the film.”

They continued:

“It’s maybe the only movie experience I’ve ever had that fully captured a unique feeling of terror that I think a lot of people in my age bracket felt as kids online, reading scary stories or watching apparently ‘cursed’ videos on the Internet in the middle of the night,” said Jane Schoenbrun, director of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, which itself attracted a lot of online discussions.

Besides receiving a theatrical release in January by IFC Midnight, Skinamarink will also appear on the streaming service Shudder later in 2023. Samuel Zimmerman, the VP of programming at Shudder, has outlined why the streamer, which aims to bring members “the scariest, most singular horror films imaginable,” has acquired the film.

“After the whole world has gone to sleep, the liminality of reality can be an utterly terrifying experience alone in your bedroom or with the lights off in your house. Skinamarink is a movie that commits so fiercely to that feeling and trying to create an experience for viewers that that destabilizes and breaks reality.”

“Skinamarink is a distinct gem, a living nightmare that’s some of the most exciting, unsettling new work in the genre. Really, it’s the best kind of horror movie, one unlike any other, that announces the arrival of a special new filmmaker.”