Under The Skin

Released by: Lionsgate
Released on: July 15th, 2014.
Director: Johnathan Glazer
Cast: Scarlet Johansson, Adam Pearson
Year: 2014
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The Movie:

Although 2014's Under The Skin (based on the book by Michel Faber) was directed by the man who gave us Sexy Beast, in many ways if feels like director Jonathan Glazer is channeling Stanley Kubric's 2001 and Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth. That's not to say that Under The Skin isn't a stark and original piece of work, because it is, but you can clearly see the influence of those two oddball sci-fi classics on this recent effort, and so too can you see the influence of the more traditional science fiction/horror mix up, Species.

The premise is that Scarlet Johansson plays a ridiculously sexy dark haired vamp who drives around Glasgow preying on men. The movie begins with a small dot of light that moves towards us, expands, and becomes an eye. Of course, the eye is hers and this is our introduction to her, out 'origin story' as it were. As she drives around she stops to ask different men for directions. They inevitably wind up in the van with her and then a rundown old building. She strips, they become entrenched in blackness. She's never named and is almost always shot in one form of darkness or another. Her red lipstick contrasts in interesting ways here and we get some obvious film noir moments. No doubt we're meant to see her as a femme fatale.

She is cruel. Her journey takes her to a beach where she sees a man in the midst of a rescue attempt while nearby a baby wails. When the man emerges, she beats him to death with a rock, completely ignoring the screaming child. In one of the film's sure to be infamous scenes, she picks up a disfigured man (Adam Pearson, who suffers from a genetic condition called Neurofibromatosis - he is not wearing makeup in this movie) and reacts to him no differently than the other men she encounters. He can only ask her if he's dreaming. Eventually, during one of her conquests, she does lose the fur coat she's been wearing up to this point. She winds up deep in a forest, unprotected in a very literal sense, and as the film draws to its conclusion to reality of both her identity and purpose is brought to light in a very unorthodox way.

Scarlet Johansson is well cast here. She's a very pretty woman and the movie plays that up. We can buy her as able to coax men into her van without a whole lot of effort, which is important to making a movie like this work. That detachment that plays such a big part in the movie's tone applies to her performance here as well. She has that cold, unfeeling trait that makes her character as frightening as she is alluring down perfectly. The men she encounters are non-actors, their initial meetings filmed unbeknownst to them with hidden cameras. There are elements of Jamie Gillis' notorious On The Prowl porno movies here.

This is a very meandering film, but a fascinating one to watch even when it's obviously trying to wow us not with story but with visuals. There's an almost droning repetition to large parts of it and this is almost disorienting in the same way that some of Gasper Noe's films can be. Don't expect much in the way of dialogue, there's very little here and there's no narration so much of what happens here is left to the viewer to interpret. It's all presented to us in a very clinical way that sort of feels like the tactics employed by David Cronenberg in some of his early pictures or, somehow, like the way Jean Rollin created an otherworldly medical nightmare in Night Of The Hunted. Of course, shades of 2001 creep into things in this way too. We're shown all of this from a distance, never allowed to really connect with any of the characters. This will no doubt immediately turn off viewers who either need or want to relate to characters in the movies they watch, but if you can deal with the almost ambivalent tone of Under The Skin there is much to appreciate about the weirdness inherent in its presentation. Appearances can be deceiving, and sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Video/Audio/Extras:

The AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer is framed at 1.85.1 and it looks very good, all things considered. The movie was shot using a mix of standard high end digital video cameras and more portable Go-Pro style units so you do notice a different in clarity and definition between certain scenes but the well encoded disc shows fantastic color reproduction and strong black levels throughout. Detail will vary from one shot to the next but it is typically quite solid even when you take into account how much post production processing has been done here. There are moments where the contrast is insanely hot and this affects things, but it's obviously quite intentional and part of the whole 'look' of the movie. It works and it works well in the context of the story. This is a really interesting movie that translates to Blu-ray quite beautifully at times.

The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix is also very good. Optional subtitles are provided in English, English SDH and Spanish. This is quite an immersive and impressive mix, one that really opens up during key moments in the film to envelope you, particularly when the movie's bizarre but effective score kicks in. There are no issues with hiss or distortion here, dialogue is nice and clear and there's a lot of discrete effects present throughout.

Extras consist pretty much entirely of a series of featurettes running roughly forty-two minutes in length. Subjects covered are: Camera / Casting / Editing / Locations / Music / Poster Design / Production Design / Script / Sound / VFX. These are all presented in high definition and do a good job of explaining their respective subjects. We get some interesting insight from the crew here but not much in the way of input from the cast. There's some good behind the scenes footage here too, plenty of bits and pieces shot on location during the shoot. Outside of that we get menus and chapter selection options, trailers for a few other Lionsgate properties and a download code for an Ultraviolet Digital Copy of the movie. The Blu-ray case comes housed inside a cardboard slipcover.

The Final Word:

Under The Skin isn't always one hundred percent successful but it is a pretty fascinating mix of arthouse explorations and science fiction elements delivered with some absolutely fantastic visual aesthetics. Scarlet Johansson is very good in the lead and the Blu-ray, if a little light on extras, looks and sounds great. This is one that really should be watched more than once and absolutely only when you're in the right mood for something that really requires you to put your own interpretation into things, but it's a pretty wild movie and one absolutely worth seeking out.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!