Special Halloween Episode!
Skinamarink
Ok, so my guess is – the kids were killed and were ghosts that cannot escape the house. Some of what we were seeing was their confusion while haunting while they try to recover their memories. I don’t really know what the apparitions were, although they could have been people in the house looking for them and the kids could only hear them in the void, but just barely. The void is like the “other side of the veil” so sometimes it seems to be thinner than others, letting in sounds. That seemed to be what happened when Kevin was first in the void – I thought I heard sounds of the outside world more clearly for a moment. I don’t know if the parents were in the void too or if they were memories. The 911 call was likely a memory. Seems like Kaylee and Kevin were separated, so maybe only Kevin died? Someone told him to cut himself with a knife, so it could be a malevolent spirit in the house told him. Lots of haunting possibilities. Could be too that the parents killed him, but I prefer the idea the parents are on the other side of the veil. All this “Go to sleep” stuff I guess means – be at peace? Kevin’s soul needs to rest.
The title itself seems to come from a children’s song originating from a 1910 Vroadway musical called “The Echo.” That cannot be a coincidence. As I think Kevin is an echo of some sort of tragedy and the song, while not featured, is all about making things silly and loving while saying goodbye.
Jimmy Durante would popularize the song in the 1950’s, but I think the Sharon Lewis and Bram version might be what the movie derives its meaning from.
Kyle Edward Ball, the writer director, explained that he got the name of the movie from the song, but changed the spelling so kids looking for the song online would not find his movie. He shot the thing with a $15k budget raised through crowd-sourcing and he borrowed equipment from The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta. Yup. Canadian.
There is definitely a feeling of confusion mixed with immature dread. It feels like childhood, with so much unknown shot from low angles. The long stares into dark corners, hallways and rooms: I remember those from my own childhood, so it’s pretty effective when mining those murky memories of childhood and being “afraid of the dark.”
There certainly could be a read on this that the dad hurt the kids. Not sure if he killed them, but that phone call he had, presumably with his own mother or his wife, seemed to be negated by all the blood resultant from Kevin’s wounds. He did not fall down stairs. He either stabbed himself or was perhaps stabbed by the father. I think the former. I think the fear of the father – the tentative way the kids look for him – results from that childhood fear of not wanting to bother adults and fearing their reaction if you do. But this is obviously a personal opinion, and informed by a childhood that wasn’t the greatest.
Ball made a 30-minute tough draft of Skinamarink called Heck, which made me think of our guest Dane Elcar and his two versions of the same story, the feature-length “Brightwood” and the short draft of it, “The Pond.” It might be good to talk about going through that experience, just like Raimi did by directing Within the Woods before Evil Dead or Paul Thomas Anderson doing “The Dirk Diggler” story in college, well before “Boogie Nights.” Or Alive in Joburg made by Neil Bloomkamp before he expanded it into District 9.
Bottom Five patience testers:
5.) JFK (1991)
dir. Oliver Stone
With a running time of over three fucking hours, this movie is a hackneyed mess of big name cameos show frequently shot through a lens coated with Vaseline. In the early 90’s, smash-cuts and shakey camerawork was all the rage to get you feeling like what you’re watching was edgy, but 3/4 this movie looks like it was shot as the most expensive soap opera you’ve ever seen, and the other 1/4 feels like the Zapruder film itself – grainy, handheld, unfocused and panicked. None of it really works for the adult me, but young Santo loved the shit out of this conspiracy-minded clap-trap. Watching it now, I cannot help thinking about all the wild leaps of logic “critical thinkers” take nowadays while condescending to those who belief, you know, the simplest explanation for the things. 9-11 being an inside job. The Moon Landing faked. The Earth being flat. All of this dumbing down of our culture really paints JFK as what it is: hogwash. Oswald killed Kennedy. That there is what it was. And no amount of Kevin Costner soliloquising is going to change this guy’s mind because, at the end of the day, this movie isn’t 1/3 as smart as it believes it is. It’s a cinematic example of the Dunning-Krueger effect; an overly confident and charismatic pastiche of idiocy. And again: it askes “Who Shot JFK?” AND THEN TAKES THREE HOURS TO NOT ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION.
4.) Under the Silver Lake (2018)
dir. David Robert Mitchell
At 2 hours and 19 minutes, “Under the Silver Lake” is about an average-length film by today’s bloated standards. But unlike most flicks sporting run-times like this one, David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to his fantastic debut “It Follows” feels like it’s doubly long. A labyrinthine and ultimately pointless mystery aping “Alice in Wonderland,” “Silver Moon” is about a burnout (played by Amazing Spider-man Andrew Garfield) who falls for his pretty new neighbor only to discover the day after he meets her that she has moved out and may be part of a grand, convoluted scheme that, for most of the film’s run-time, seems to spill over in every direction but one that would explain what actually happened to the girl. The ending reveals all, in a perfectly unsatisfactory manner – I won’t give it away because maybe you like torturing yourself with riddles that don’t really make sense – and even if you sort of dug the cool, slow, weird vibe of the flick, you end up feeling like the films protagonist by the end: as if a lot of time has passed and you’ve not done anything worthwhile with your life.
3.) Pretty Much any “parody comedy” written and directed by the team of Aaron Selzer and Jason Friedberg
Seltzer and Friedberg are the duo who brought us “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Meet the Spartans,” “Disaster Movie,” and “The Starving Games.” I don’t think I should have to say much more than just listing off those titles because if you’ve seen one of their flicks, you’ve seen them all. Startlingly unfunny despite shooting their shot every other second, I don’t know if there are too many movies that tried my patience as much as these “satires” which feature next to no satire in them. They’re patently dumb affairs, starring a bunch of stars who should know better than to collect paychecks for this palp, and by midway through any one of their thankfully anemic running times, which usually tap out around 1hr 23 minutes, you’ll be checking your watch or yawning. I’m honestly shocked we haven’t spent any time with the “movie” series, and yeah, they were among the SIX writers on the original “Scary Movie,” which sort of makes them the victors in a Battle Royale to see who will captain the worst franchise cinema has running, including all those goddamn shot-on-video Amityville movies.
2.) The Passion of the Christ (2004)
dir. Mel Gibson
I can;t with this one. I just can’t. It’s not even all that capably made, honestly. It’s just this overwrought nightmare of torture and suffering that feels like it’s saying to its audience “HEY, You all are a bunch of thankless bastards who owe everything to the suffering of this one man.” And OH, does he suffer! Director Mel Gibson, yes “Riggs from Lethal Weapon/ Max from Mad Max/Anti-semite from traffic stops” Mel Gibson, creates an over-dramatized, almost criminally violent recreation of Christ’s final day before his crucifixion that stands as a test not of one’s faith in Jesus or God, but as a test of visual endurance. It’s the kind of film you’d see in parodies of Hollywood, a shockingly over-earnest, over-serious endeavor stuffed with unintentionally comedic theatricality and indulgent slow motion. I would expect this to be the movie that people are working on in Altman’s “The Player” or maybe something Kevin Spacey’s producer was on the set for in “Swimming With Sharks.” But no, this was done as a serious representation of Christ’s final hours and man, I simply did not have the patience for almost any of it. Want me to take Christ serious? Don’t serve him up all ham-fisted and chock full of gore. Yes, he died for all our sins, sure, but he did a lot of other really good stuff that probably would make a much better, much less laughably shocking film.
1.) The Irishman (2019)
dir. Martin Scorcese
I’ve been on the outside looking in with a lot of Scorcese’s movies, and typically my favorites by him – things like King of Comedy and After Hours – are blips others believe are missteps. So while most froth with praise over Goodfellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street or Gangs of New York, I’m over in my corner with my arms crossed and a puss on my face. Yet there’s no one movie by him that tested my patience more, however, than 2019’s fucking three-and-a-half hour snore-fest, The Irishman. Yes, Rolling Stone called it “An All-time great Scorcese epic,” but I call it frustratingly tiresome and ill-rendered, in particular any scenes shot in the past during which allegedly young versions of Deniro and Pesci still move about like old men, with their CG masks barely concealing their true ages. The characters are uninteresting – regardless of what billion-watt movie star is playing them – and without anyone to really care about in the film, it’s impossible to care about whatever the hell happened to Jimmy Hoffa, which is sort of the central mystery of the film and its source material, a book called “I Heard You Pain Houses.” Celebrated screenwriter Steve Zallian tried to mold the whole thing into a character-based, Goodfellas in their Golden Years, piece, but even his skills fell short. Apparently the idea took root between Scorcese and Deniro some 35 years before it was made, with several years spent in development Hell and the final budget ballooning to anywhere between $160-$250 million dollars before it debuted on fucking NETFLIX. Seriously? For what? I snored my way through this dull, uninspired mob mess, a true test of patience that either it, or I, failed miserably.
Runner up, the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy which Mike mentioned recently, so I did not include it.
Skinamarink raw notes:
- IFC Midnight presented Skinamarink to the world. What other movies did they do.
- Even the opening company logos carry the overall style of the film. The credits have a more 60’s or 70’s vibe than 90’s when the movie is set.
- A whole movie built on the premise that what’s out of frame is terrifying.
- The kids leaving the room with the tape recorder is interesting.
- Joshua Bookhalter’s passing, worth mentioning!
- So many angles of doorways, with closed doors or open to darkness. Windows are closed too. As if there is no escape.
- TV shuts off and there’s total darkness. Nightlight flutters. Photos on the wall almost look like skills. There’s a pervasive eeriness. Like when you’re a kid and you see shapes in the shadows of your bedroom.
- I recall, during my first watch of this, being so annoyed by the filmmakers keeping so much out of frame. I do appreciate the sound, though.
- Little kid in hallway by blinking nightlight. Pretty creepy.
- DOORWAYS EVERYWHERE.
- It’s like, why not show the characters?!?!
- I keep seeing weird shapes in the darkness.
- Subtitles. Interesting way to get around the dialogue being whispered.
- Man, there’s some next level creepy in the sound design. I feel like this movie is made for headphones.
- The crying! Wow. Very upsetting!
- I suppose a lot of this is from the POV of children – always looking up and unsure of what is in the dark – what’s real and what isn’t. Trying to make sense of the world from a smaller vantage point.
- TV goes on, starts to play some cartoons, I guess, and then someone turns on the lights and it seems like they come home. Then they walk into the kids room because they thought they were awake?
- Phone sequence – lights are on. Is this the person who just came home? “So… he’s fine, but Kevin fell down the stairs and hit his head.”
- So, did he bring the kid home from the hospital? Kaylee and Kevin? A boy and a girl? Was the crying the boy who fell down the stairs?
- Toilet flushes later that night?
- Little feet. It’s a kid coming from the toilet. Maybe Kaylee?
- Kid looks like he/she is checking out the house. Asks for “Dad?” and comes back into frame with more speed, then walks down another hallway and whispers for Dad.
- Oh, two kids now. Must be Kaylee and Kevin.
- A window appears and disappears. Imagination?
- “Where did it go?” I heard it as “Where did THEY go.” Then there’s another call for “DAD?”
- Doors and windows appear and disappear with weird 60’s WFO sound effects.
- Kid is looking all through the house for “Dad.”
- Phone again. This the kid this time? Misses the cradle on hanging up. Must be a kid. Is there no dialtone?
- Trying to call 911, it sounds like. No connection. Creepy! (Could be 411, but why?)
- “Can we sleep downstairs tonight?” I think that’s asked by Kevin. He sounds like the younger of the two. Something is scary about upstairs, or maybe he just wants to watch TV.
- Kevin wants the lights on. I think he says he feels safer.
- Of course, the lights go out. “Kevin” someone whispers. Is it Kaylee? “Love you,” she says. “Love you too,” he answers.
- Now Kaylee is calling for Kevin, telling him it’s time to get up.
- The public domain cartoons set a creepy mood for sure. And weirdly out-of-time sense to things.
- Kaylee wants to go upstairs to get some stuff.
- So then we must be following Kaylee upsiras while she gets things.
- Sounds like she is gathering toys.
- The nightlight is now unplugged?
- She must see it and then looks into the room adjacent and wonders if someone is in there?
- Toys are all over the floor. Kaylee asks if “Dad” is there. No answer.
- She plugs the light back in and then shuts off the overhead.
- Oops. The nightlight sounds like it’s unplugged again.
- Light over the stairs is off. Was that Kaylee? Or someone else? Guess it was someone else!
- No that light isn’t working. They keep trying it with no luck!
- And they return to the safety of the TV room and it sounds like they continue their coloring.
- I could see this being a good short film, but it’s not even 30 minutes in and my patience is waning.
- “Why is mom crying?” I cannot say I heard any crying.
- “How come dad hasn’t called yet?” – Kevin. “I don’t Know” – Kaylee.
- Banging and then “What was tha-?” and a jumpscare bang!
- Chair on the ceiling. Kids stare at it without saying a word for like twenty seconds! “We should be quiet.” – Kaylee
- “Where do you think Dad is?” – Kevin “I don’t KNow.” – Kaylee
- Maybe he went with mom – Kevin. *Is Kevin dead?
- “I don’t want to talk about Mom,” says Kaylee. I think?
- Kids fall asleep.
- Lights turning on in this movie are jump scares.
- “Kaylee… You have to come see this.” Kevin says creepily. Then you hear Kaylee walk.
- Ha. Mystery toilet appears and disappears.
- Now they have a flashlight and they are walking around. Dispelling darkness, but adding movement to the shadows.
- The grain in this movie is like a character in the dark scenes. It creates figures and shapes.
- Something weird on top of the bed and something on the ceiling. No idea what either are. Thing on the ceiling looked like a bandaid. Oh, it’s dolls or toys?
- Fucking doll jumpscare sent me out of my fucking skin.
- “I got scared and couldn’t go.” What to the bathroom? Ha, a bucket to replace the toilet. ” Gross.”
- NOw he’s building legos. It’s like, what, 3 in the morning?
- “Come Upstairs” sounds like it was uttered by an alien.
- Slow creep to the parent’s room builds suspense. “Dad?” practically a jumpscare. This movie does a surprising amount with so very little.
- Looks like Dad is sitting on the bed or standing next to it. “Look under the bed.” Yikes.
- “I can’t see anything.” – Kaylee.
- OH man, down again. YEESH.
- The anticipation of a jumpscare it crazy.
- Oh and there’s mom with her back to the camera. Oh boy. And no Dad. Mom – “Kaylee?” “Your… your father,” BANG.
- The fact mom is not moving is highly unnerving.
- “We love you and Kevin very much.”
- “Kaylee. I need you to close your eyes. Please.” Said so… slowly.
- ALL BLACK. We are Kaylee here.
- And mom is gone when we open our eyes. So much of this is from the kids’ point of view.
- “There’s someone here” Kaylee whispers and mom, louder: “There’s someone here.”
- Mom tells her to go nack downstairs and it sounds like someone is eating something gross. Jumpscare scream and BOOP. Weird.
- Kevin: “Where did you go.” Kaylee says nothing but then asks him to move the couch.
- Kid tries turning on the light in the kitchen. No dice. Using flashlight.
- Kevin: “What happened upstairs?” No reply.
- Creepy breathing and voice: “Kaylee…”
- Then Kevin: “Kaylee?” “Kaylee?” “HALLO?”
- Peeing in the bucket, I guess?
- Something breathing weird is knocking over the legos…
- Toys end up on the wall, along with a vhs tape. There’s a sense of weird poltergeist activity.
- “Kevin, Please.” Is that Dad?
- “Kevin” – muffled, coming from somewhere. Again, “Kevin?” Sounds like a woman or maybe Kaylee “I’m scared!’ Very muffled. ” I feel strange.”
- Kaylee has no eyes or mouth – big sting noise and jumpscare. Kevin runs back to the downstairs, terrified.
- Kevin has juice boxes. And this voice keeps calling him. “Hallo?”
- “SLEEP.” and the juice box hits the floor.
- So the cartoon’s are on VHS? And then get paused?
- Rabbit in cartoon repeatedly makes itself disappear for a stuffed animal to watch and see, until it too disappears!
- ” I want to play,” says… the ghost?
- THE AUDACITY OF THIS MOVIE TO BE 1hr. 40 minutes!
- Back to the Lego churning – looking for that one piece that you cannot find!
- OH that loop is back on the TV – a big hint, it seems. And after, everyone is gone? One of the iwdest, most standard angles we have had.
- Oh, did Kevin vanish the way the cartoon character did? And then he reappeared?
- “Put the knife in your eye.” Yikes.
- The crying is back – pretty terrible. OH, an dblood on the cabinet in the kitchen…
- “Wake Up.” Sounds like Dad. Kevin’s breathing, very ragged.
- Oh that’s a lot of blood.
- Sounds like he laid down. THe cartoons started back up.
- Wow, we’re going into the television – nice play with the sound become more full and immersive.
- Kevin’s ragged breathing again? Did he disappear? Breathing stopped.
- Nightlight, plugged in but not working.
- Shot of a corner, is that the ceiling, the floor? There’s the weird “UFO sound” and it sounds like Kevin or someone warped back.
- Top of a kids head – could be Kaylee
- Yup, Kaylee – revealed by back of her head. Did she warp again? Phone is off the hook?
- Ragged breathing – Kaylee’s this time? She had laid down, but then went to investigate the phone. She successfully called 911.
- Oh. It’s Kevin on the phone! 911 sounds like Charlie Brown. (Does Kevin have long hair – I thought they would telegraph girl vs. boy with hair.)
- Kevin confirms he got cut with a knife and feels sick. The operator is an interesting way to get some exposition.
- “Can you tell me why you’re whispering? Is there someone in the room with you?”
- “I’m downstairs but the door is gone.”
- Phone drops. Operator keeps asking if he’s still there.
- FLashlight.
- Look at toy phone – Kevin says “You did that.” Then monster noises.
- Seems like Kevin fell asleep again? Dad voice says… I don’t know. Is it raining out? Sounds getting weird. Building. Almost like the gain was levelled up on silence to hear something.
- We see Kevin – short hair. “How did you do that?” “I can do anything” answers the apparition/Dad. “Kaylee didn’t do what she was told. She said she wanted mom and Dad. So I took her mouth away.”
- Scared crying. Guess it’s Kevin. Apparition voice with no subtitle. Boo.
- Oh, now Kevin appears to be on the ceiling like the chair. “Keep going” says the voice, presumably directing Kevin to the door while he walks on the ceiling.
- Oh, he’s walking an impossible distance and his breathing echoes – “Can I go back in the house?”
- Sounds of… maybe the real world intruding on the void? He seems stuck wherever he is. Light goes on and all the toys are on the ceiling. 572 days later? The tape recorder from the beginning seems like it’s playing cartoon music? Or it that the TV? THe corridor is impossibly long.
- Light goes out, creepy toy music plays.
- Kaylee sitting on the side of her bed like mom did. She… lap dissolves – or sort of wipe-dissolves from her body up to her head. Lamp is knocked over. Now there’s her voice as an apparition?
- A from-the-ceiling perspective on the playroom, looking at the TV. It seems to have nothing on it.
- Super wide shot of the house in the void. It disappears too.
- Some turns on and turns off the flashlight. Seems like they are in a closet, looking into a room, but then… the door shuts. – Scary eyes looking back. Oh, it’s that phone – and it RINGS for a jump scare and SMILES. Yikes.
- Photos with kids’ heads missing? Photo of blood on the couch? Blood on the ceiling. Crying and then lots of blood and then… cartoon. Then less blood. Then crying. It’s appearing and disappearing.
- “Mommy” cried out. Hmm… This is getting tough to endure. I’m worried too much about the kids.
- Kevin stepping toward the TV – “Kaylee, can we watch something happy?”
- Door in the void. Sort of reminds me of the sunken place from “Get Out.”
- A face rises from the darkness – “Go to sleep.” Kevin: “What? What’s your name?”