Between the last months of 2022 and the first months of 2023, a strange – in the best sense – independent production shook the lines of some internet circles. "Skinamarink" (2022) was quietly released at the Fantasia Film Festival in its Montreal edition, where it generated some buzz among the audience.
With a budget of under $15,000, the brilliant mind of Kyle Edward Ball, responsible for directing, writing, and the screenplay, achieved a lot! Employing a mixed analog-digital filming approach, Ball guides us into a harrowing, lucid, and seemingly endless nightmare.
In the plot, we follow Kevin and Kaylee, brother and sister, respectively, as they wake up in the middle of an extremely unusual night. Initially, their parents are absent from the house, and the children realize that they are in the most familiar prison possible: the front doors and windows of the house have disappeared. The unique location (the director's childhood home), the carpeted floors, the scattered toys, the tube televisions, and the children's pajamas bring intimacy, coziness, and the latent nostalgia of the Western middle-class generation of the late '90s and early 2000s. The static and audacious camera angles soothe the viewer and weigh on the eyes. At times, feeling sleepy is essential since it is sleep that makes us vulnerable and defenseless, turning us into literal children once again.
SKINAMARINK (2022), dirigido por Kyle Edward Ball.
The granules and noises used in the photography bring a unique visual poetry to the work, creating identity and language. The discomfort that numbs our bodies during the peculiar 100 minutes of the debut of the young Canadian director ties our bodies to the chair and invites us into our childhood memories.
Discovering Ball's early film exercises is quite an experience! The director, on YouTube, owns the channel Bitesized Nightmares, where he has been publishing his productions for years, which already had the veins through which "Skinamarink" would gain its blood flow. Among the various shorts of 2, 3, and 4 minutes, one stands out for its duration. "Heck" (2020) serves as the preamble to "Skinamarink." The similarities between the two are undeniable. It's a great way to send shivers down your spine in less than 30 minutes. A point of relevance in both works discussed so far is the fear of parental abandonment. In the 2022 feature film, the mother briefly appears in some scenes and then disappears. In the 2020 short film, the mother abandons her own son because he has been cursed with cancer. "I'm sorry I got cancer" is the phrase that shatters feelings in "Heck."
HECK (2020), dirigido por Kyle Edward Ball.
In the feature film, the possibility of a potential divorce process between the parents of the young ones is hinted at. Clues are provided within a monologue by the mother to Kaylee, where the matriarch is interrupted by the noise of some piece of furniture or utensil being dragged when she says, "Your father and I...," and shortly after expressing that they both love the children very much, she disappears.
SKINAMARINK (2022), dirigido por Kyle Edward Ball.
The disappearance of basic modern Western subsistence items effectively constructs meaning and highlights the discomfort. At one point, Kevin calls his sister to the bathroom to show her that the toilet has disappeared. It's like a lucid dream dynamics, in this case, a nightmare, where we can change colors and move objects to other places.
To enhance the construction of a cyclical nightmare, the film is structured in days, explicitly indicating that the oppressive feeling accompanies the growth of these young individuals and inflicts traumas that will last a lifetime.
SKINAMARINK (2022), dirigido por Kyle Edward Ball.
In the final scene of the film, a figure appears in the darkness and breaks the fourth wall by asking for our names. Whether to respond or not is part of the terrifying experience that is "Skinamarink." Personally, I must say that I responded with a smile on my face.
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