Too Scary; Didn't Watch - Bonus Episode: SKINAMARINK

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Sammy is flying solo (spooky!!) for this extra bonus Halloween recap of Skinamarink. To hear reviews of the other horror movies she has watched this spooky season, join our Patreon.Follow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy.Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary, Didn't Watch. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Too Scary, Didn't Watch, the horror movie recap podcast for those too scared to watch for themselves. I'm Sammy and I love watching scary movies and so I watch them so that you don't have to. And what the heck is going on? Where are Emily and Henley, my beloved co-hosts? They are not here with me today. This is a extra bonus special Halloween episode where I am going to be flying solo. We're going to see how this goes because I've never done this before. Feels a little weird talking just to myself and of course to all of you out there. Um, but yeah, we decided to just do a little extra special Halloween episode drop here because I have

watched a bunch of horror movies in the month of October and you know, not all of them are going to be recapped. So I thought I would just hop on here to tell you about the things that I've watched and what I've thought about them. And the first half of this episode is going to be a long anticipated recap of Skinnamarink. And the second half will just be my brief thoughts on everything else I've watched, including Jennifer's body, Saw 10, and even Fall of the House of Usher. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. And that will be available for our patrons at patreon.com slash TSDW podcast. But the Skinnamarink recap, that's going to be here for everybody to enjoy. So let's get into it. Skinnamarink came out in 2022. It was directed by Kyle Edward Ball, a real divisive film. Most people that saw it either thought it was absolutely terrifying or insanely boring.

Those are the main two responses, terrified or bored. I fell somewhere in the middle. I will tell you, I had an interesting viewing experience, which I'll get into in a second. But first, I will tell you that Skin and Meringue has a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 66% on Metacritic, Metacritic and a 4.9 on IMDB. The budget was 15,000 made 2.1 million. Now these are some good numbers. This is a paranormal activity style, Blair Witch style, bare bones, something that just word of mouth, people describe it as the scariest thing ever. And then everybody goes to see it. Um, so good for them, you know, if nothing else good for them making that money. Uh, I believe it's streaming on Hulu, possibly also shutter.com. Uh, if you want to check it out. And Skinner Inc. is one that I will say I'd say the Wikipedia

synopsis just about covers it. You know, not a lot happens in this movie. It's mostly vibes, spooky vibes. And if you watch truly the first three minutes, you'll get a good sense of the entire movie because it's kind of it's just slow looking in dark corners. looking in dark corners. It's got a very grainy film look. And so your brain searches for shapes in the grain. Like it feels like it's almost an optical illusion at times. And, or, you know, when you close your eyes and you rub your eyes too hard and you start seeing shapes. I felt like it was kind of like that and for that reason I feel like watching this movie hypnotized me. I in the first couple minutes was getting the sense okay this is going to be this is going to be really boring and it's pretty long. It's an hour and 40 minutes going to be, this is going to be really boring. And it's pretty long. It's an hour and 40 minutes for there to be almost no dialogue and not a ton of things happening. That's a long time, but it really flew by for me. I don't know. At some point early on in it, I decided to just, you know, give myself over to it. And I pretended that I was in one of those rooms in an art museum, you know, in art museums when they play movies, maybe short little experimental

films, and there's a little dark room that you go and you watch it. I imagined I was in one of those rooms and I was watching a experimental art film because I'd say that's very much what this is. And so if you're coming to this movie expecting a Hollywood traditional type of movie with a plot and act one, act two, act three, you're not going to get that. You're going to be annoyed. And so I figured that out early on and decided to just appreciate it for what it was. And I ended up enjoying it. So, okay, I'm going to go through the Wikipedia synopsis because like I said, it, uh, it, it covers about everything.

And I'm going to just add in little thoughts here and there. So it says in 1995, four-year-old Kevin injures himself in what his six-year-old sister Kaylee says is a sleepwalking episode. Kevin is taken to a hospital and brought back home. episode. Kevin is taken to a hospital and brought back home. The siblings wake up in the middle of the night to find that their father has disappeared and the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are gradually vanishing. So that already was like 20 minutes of the movie. That takes a very long time to realize what's happening. And there were some cool shots early on that got me feeling like into it. There's a shot of a staircase and it's like you can see it's very shadowy and dark, but it feels like you can see someone walking down the stairs. someone walking down the stairs and they're always just outside of the line of sight, like clear sight. And so it just, there's a lot of second guessing yourself of,

is there something there? Is there something not there? And the dialogue in this is very, very sparse. It'll have something like one of the little kids saying, Kaylee? And then that's the only line of dialogue for like five minutes. Kevin suggests they sleep downstairs where they watch cartoons on TV. They awaken to find the house still dark, hear an unexpected thumping noise, and find a chair standing upside down on the ceiling. Kevin then suggests that their dad went with mom, but Kaylee does not want to talk about their mother. Uh, the TV is the TV. The cartoons on the TV are very like, um, old timey kind of Mickey mouse looking stuff. I read that there, or no, maybe even in the film, it says that they're public domain stuff, but it's that sort of thing.

And it's just a little unsettling TV screens at nighttime. I mean, I guess that's when I watch TV, but it just feels a little creepy. And the toilet in the downstairs bathroom disappears. And the toilet in the downstairs bathroom disappears. There's just an ongoing sense of things are not right in this house. But with the perspective, you're kind of in the perspective of the children who are probably, oh, it said in the beginning. They're four and six. And so you feel what I think is meant to be their sense of confusion and not really understanding of what's happening. On their way to the upstairs bathroom, Kaylee sees a doll on a bedroom ceiling and Kevin ends up too frightened to use the toilet. They decide to place two buckets in the downstairs bathroom. A mysterious voice calls to Kaylee from the darkness, telling her to come upstairs.

This voice is pretty scary. It's like, Kaylee, come upstairs. The voice is actually in the trailer if you want to watch it and hear it. Good creepy voice. It is scary. So she goes upstairs, sees their father in the bedroom. He's sitting on his on like the side of the bed, not turning to look at her. We know something is not right. It's feeling very creepy. He tells her to look under the bed, which is very scary. Look under the bed. Hell no, but she does. And she doesn't see anything. But it's just a long drawn out sequence of looking under a bed. But I feel like pretty early on, I realized nothing was ever actually going to happen. And so I didn't feel like a sense of dread here. I think I could definitely see how people would though. It's, I won't say it's not scary at all. It's just, I think requires you to have this specific fear or childhood memory of being alone in a house and, um, and to kind of conjure up those memories as you're, uh, watching this. So Kaylee then sees her mother sitting on the bed. Mother says they love her and Kevin. And instructs her to close her eyes before vanishing.

Kaylee looks at the open closet. And hears her mother say there's someone here. From the closet she hears her mother calling her name. As well as moans of pain and bones breaking. You know, that sounds scary. I actually don't even remember that. I must have been fully hypnotized at that moment. Kaylee returns downstairs and has Kevin help her push the couch to block off the hallway from which the voice was calling her. When Kevin falls asleep, the voice calls Kaylee again. When Kevin wakes up, Kaylee is gone. Toys and objects are suspended against a wall. The voice calls to Kevin,

beckoning him into the basement where he sees Kaylee, who no longer has eyes or a mouth, which is scary. I feel like you're hearing her kind of muffled out calls to him because she doesn't have a mouth anymore. Like the scene in the matrix where she's like going, and then you see her with no eyes and no mouth and, uh, you don't like it. We are, we're not fond of that. And the mysterious voice tells him it wants to play as some of the toys begin to disappear. A drawer opens in the kitchen and Kevin complies with the voice's command that he insert a knife into one of his eyes. Oh, God. Yeah. OK, so the voice goes, I don't know, just tells him to stab himself in the eye. And I guess he does it. It doesn't really show it. And I don't think you hear him screaming or anything, but it's just implied. And it's one of those things, again, that your brain is filling in the gaps. And then you hear Kevin call 911. And he is whispering now that you hear the operator answer. And he's whispering that he's cut with a knife and he feels sick. And the operator is

telling him to stay on the line. Adults are going to be on their way soon. And he says that the doors have disappeared. And I think we see an outside shot of the house with no doors or windows. Basically, we are getting the sense that nobody is going to be able to help Kevin. And the phone turns into a chatter telephone, one of those little like toy phones where it's a face. And Kevin asks the voice how he did that. And he says he can do anything. And the voice says that Kaylee did not do as it told her. She said she wanted her parents, so it took away her mouth. Now it tells Kevin to come upstairs and he obeys. Holding a flashlight, he finds himself on the ceiling. He walks into a bedroom, which becomes a void. A dollhouse is shown sitting on a pile of toys in a seemingly infinite hallway as text on the screen reads 572 days. Didn't really know what that was all about, I'll be honest.

A female figure is seen sitting on the bed and her head slowly fades away, followed by the rest of her body. Photos are shown of people, except their faces are either missing or distorted. Kevin cries out as blood splatters onto the floor, then disappears and spatters repeatedly. He asks if he can watch something happy, and an unidentifiable face appears over him in his bed, telling him to go to sleep. Kevin asks for the face's name twice, but it does not respond either time. And that's it. That's the whole movie. And the face above him in bed is a pretty scary moment. It's really hard to see what it is, but you just know whatever it is, it's not good. It's not going to be good. And yeah, it's a very, very interesting movie. I did read some interpretations of it being about child abuse and what it feels like to be a kid with an abusive parent because he is

unable to get out of the house even when you call 911 or ask for help like your parents are the ones that should be able to help you and so where can you go if your parents are the, uh, source of the fear, which is a very absolutely devastating, um, read of this film. And yeah, I mean, I mean, I think that that's probably what Kyle Edward Ball was trying to get across and, um, trying to get across. And, um, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I wasn't necessarily scared by it. I can definitely see how you could be scared by it. Um, but I enjoyed it in a very strange way and that it just, after it was over, I kind of felt like I was high. And I think it was because it felt like I was watching or looking at one of those like magic eye drawings for an hour and 40 minutes. And I just felt kind of dizzy. But that said, I'm like glad that this movie exists and that he got to make it.

that this movie exists and that he got to make it because it's just nice to have, you know, different kinds of horror movies. I like to see people doing interesting new things and, you know, taking swings. Yeah, I don't know. I liked it. So yeah, that's Skinnamarink, a very bizarre, interesting film. And now I'm going to talk about some other horror movies I've watched this spooky season, some that I've really loved and some that I've really hated. So let's get into it. and some that I've really hated. So let's get into it. If you would like to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to want to head over to our Patreon at patreon.com slash TSDW podcast and join us in Tony fucking Collette's inner circle. There you'll gain access to all previous bonus episodes. We do weekly video trailer reactions. You'll get to vote for future episodes. We do weekly video trailer reactions.

You'll get to vote for future episodes. It's a really great place to be. You're going to want to check it out. But if not, we will be back next week with a regular episode. Bye.