For some horror fans, Skinamarink was a bust—a waste of one hour and forty minutes on this beautiful, mysterious earth.  The same security guard stood outside the theater both times Michael and I saw it, and he was aghast that we saw it twice.  Certainly, some of the theatergoers liked the film, based on post-movie conversations, but others responded with a resounding, “it sucked,” and moved on with their lives.  As for me, well, I can’t seem to get that monster out of my mind, to echo the title of a Joan Didion essay (although to be honest, I don’t remember what that essay was about).  Indeed, the “monster” in the film is a diabolical force that takes over a family’s household.  And it’s a diabolical force that’s incredibly well-conveyed—so much so that I have concluded this is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen.  Given, however, that the whole movie is a sequence of fuzzy camera stills, I’m quite interested in considering why I found it so scary.  That is, at least, (part) of what this blog post is about.  I haven’t written casually about horror in a while, but my most frequent horror-writing tendency has always been to highlight the main things I have to say about a film (even when they’re disconnected) and discuss them in my blog posts.  That is, then, what I will do here.  To that end, here are my thoughts on Skinamarink, a landmark horror film that I would situate as a genre-bending classic.

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