Under the Skin is a 2013 science fiction horror film co-written and directed by former music video and TV advert specialist Jonathan Glazer. It stars Scarlett Johansson and a cast of unknown actors. It is adapted from Michel Faber‘s 2000 novel of the same name, about an alien sent to Earth by a rich corporation to prey on unwary hitchhikers. The film is set in Scotland.
The film is in competition at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. It is also set to play later that same month at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
” … initial intrigue gives way to repetition and tedium. Glazer has always been longer on atmosphere and uncanny moods than on narrative, but the fatal flaw of “Under the Skin” isn’t that not much happens; it’s that what does happen isn’t all that interesting. The world as seen through alien eyes, it turns out, looks much like the world as seen through the eyes of a schizophrenic … which, if it’s Glazer’s point, is one he makes early and often, Johansson doing her best to convey varying degrees of blankness and incomprehension at her own actions and those of others.” Scott Foundas, Variety
” …. plays as a kind of malarial dream, bathed in cold sweat and seeing hallucinations in every corner. Johansson proves bizarrely engrossing as the unnamed succubus, fetchingly augmented with jet-black hair and blood-red lipstick, who drives a van around Scotland in search of her prey. The men she meets are bored and horny and can’t believe their good fortune. The alien duly lures them in with polite, persistent questions, barely pausing to hear the replies. Then she ushers each man down the steps into a pool of viscid fluid where they spot the bodies of former victims, floating naked in the gloom like Bluebeard’s wives.” Xan Brooks, The Guardian
“The point of the film is not to see an alien at work among us but to see us from an alien’s point of view. And it works with very little in the way of a screenplay and even less obvious explanation – but with a send of mystery and wonder that a good filmmaker can manufacture through style and atmosphere. Mica Levi’s music adds considerably to the sense that we are gettinga view of normal life that is distinctly different.” Derek Malcolm, London Evening Standard
