SKINAMARINK Review

Dreams and nightmares. They say that 5 minutes after we wake from a dream, we've already forgotten 50% of it. At 10 minutes, 90% is gone. What does remain is a snapshot. Walking on that beach, forgetting to turn in that paper, or seeing someone in the house. But what happens if you remember more? What happens if you can't get out?

Nightmares tilt everything askew. They look different. Ball here using camera grain as another character within. A device to play tricks on you in the vision. Looks down the hallway, into the black. "What is that?" you think. This repeats, always vague, until it's weaponized. The audio follows suit. Everything's off, knobs turned too high or too low. The kids feet on carpet like the sound of a spade shovel into hot sand, which is then hammered through metal sieves of white noise. The disorientation interrupted by the eerie sounds of kids cartoons, or worse.

Even in the most hellish of hallucinations, innocence remains in children. The oddities of it set aside for opportunity. "We can play. We can watch TV." Questions to those taller remain standard, plain:

"Why?"

"Mom?"

"What is your name?"

All outside the scenario they're in. Adults don't operate in this plainspeak. Rationalization and socialized politeness doesn't allow. But kids don't know this, they need those same taller entities to teach. And as the nightmare gets longer and longer, they drift further away from innocence. The darkness becomes a black hole and the kids reach for light. Terror in children's eyes is viewed through a telescope pointing up, searching for kind eyes. But where do screams of fright go when there's nobody to hold your hand through it, and the eyes above you aren't kind?

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The above was taken from my Letterboxd review.