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‘Under the Skin’ Reviews – A terrifying, beautiful, and utterly disturbing return from Jonathan Glazer

‘Under the Skin’ Reviews – A terrifying, beautiful, and utterly disturbing return from Jonathan Glazer

We had several writers pen reviews for “Under the Skin”. Here they are.

Review #1

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Under the Skin

Written by Walter Campbell and Jonathan Glazer

Directed by Jonathan Glazer

UK and USA, 2013

A profound sense of unease permeates and accompanies Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer’s first film in nearly 10 years. Glazer’s debut feature, the excellent British gangster picture Sexy Beast, married vicious and profane dialogue with a penchant for nightmarish imagery; his follow-up, the austere and stately Birth, was a quieter piece that relied heavily on the porcelain-doll qualities of his leading lady, Nicole Kidman. Each of his three films, Under the Skin included, have a knack for presenting the ostensibly normal as something indescribably frightening, whether it’s the sunbaked backyard of an ex-thief or a middle-aged man’s daily jog through Central Prak or the simple act of driving a van through a rainy city. More than his previous features, though, Glazer leaves behind the vagaries of plot and exposition-as-dialogue in Under the Skin, a most elusive, disturbing, and hard-to-shake picture.

At the center of Under the Skin is Scarlett Johansson, portraying an unnamed woman who prowls the streets of Scotland, hunting for men who are on their own. She seduces them—even though Johansson dons a short black wig here, it’s arguably not a difficult task—and lures them back to her solitary house where…well, to say any more is to ruin the frightening and stark imagery. But suffice to say, she doesn’t have their best interests in mind. Glazer and his co-writer Walter Campbell, working from a novel by Michel Faber (though they have apparently steered far away from making a faithful adaptation), eschew most standards of three-act filmmaking and instead rely (successfully) primarily on two elements: Johansson’s inscrutable visage and a sense of unavoidable terror.

undertheskin

In some respects, possibly unintentionally, Under the Skin functions as a meta-commentary on Scarlett Johansson’s current career, or in a more general sense, the place of femininity in our celebrity culture. In recent months, Johansson has been the focus of a controversial profile in The New Yorker by Anthony Lane; her comments weren’t what inspired people to hotly debate the profile as much as Lane’s verbal drooling over her beauty. (Mr. Lane, no doubt, wouldn’t put up much of a fight had he been one of the random non-actors who Johansson’s character in Under the Skin picks up.) And considering her exemplary work in Spike Jonze’s her as well as her fairly one-dimensional character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s hard not to see this film as her trying to claim a bit more agency in the way she’s perceived by men, if not by everyone. Her character—who undergoes something of an identity crisis throughout Under the Skin—is unnamed and identified solely by her physical beauty, which is enough for these strangers to disrobe in her strange domicile. Though Johansson does speak in the film—far less in the second half—she’s often engaging in meaningless small talk, communicating more with her dark eyes and flirtatious smile. She’s a hollow shell in search of meaning.

As Under the Skin progresses, Johansson’s character displays even less control than was initially the case. (Even when she’s seducing these hapless young men to their doom, she’s doing so under the watchful eye of a male motorcyclist, who may be her keeper or something more nefarious.) As she begins to question her place in the universe, she loses whatever meager power her body afforded her. All of this is communicated, appropriately, physically; by the film’s end, Johansson is speaking in a barely audible whisper instead of her originally vivacious tones. As such, Under the Skin lives or dies on Scarlett Johansson’s performance, which is one of her finest, on the heels of her excellent vocal work in her; her detached impassivity transforms subtly into disaffected alienation by the final, haunting moments, beginning to approach a state of relatable humanity. No one else in the film—the few other women are mostly seen and not heard, or seen and not heard clearly—makes as great an impact as Johansson; at certain points, Glazer superimposes her face so that it nearly hovers over the denizens of Scotland, observant and unemotional. Johansson continues to improve as an actress, and with Under the Skin, she’s taken an immense and daring leap into the unknown.Under the Skin

Technically, Under the Skin is as perfectly composed as Sexy Beast or Birth; unlike with those films, Glazer and his cinematographer Daniel Landin have shot this in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, compressing the action in such a way to heighten a tense claustrophobia. Even with a tighter aspect ratio, Glazer and Landin have found ways to visually communicate the foggy and foreboding qualities of Scotland; early in the film, one of the male conquests explained that he moved to this country because “it’s nowhere.” This becomes a fitting comparison; when Johansson has gotten her metaphorical hooks in these men and leads them to a chilling death, it is in a state of dark blankness. She leads them, almost literally, nowhere, to an absence of tactile and physical locations. It is this absence that allows Under the Skin to present Scotland as some kind of nightmarish and alien world, an impenetrable and destructive force uncontrolled and untamed by humans. Glazer doesn’t lack for more specifically horrifying imagery; to describe it in great detail would ruin the moment’s surprise, but when it’s revealed, somewhat obliquely, exactly what happens to these men once Johansson’s done with them is extraordinarily scary. The ominous and intentionally repetitive score by Mica Levi also contributes to an unerring sense of fear; its throbbing notes and screaming violins are as inescapable as Johansson’s indescribably foreign presence.

The ambiguity of Under the Skin, present from the opening scene (which calls to mind the Star Gate sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey), is impossible to shake; the film is a mystery that cannot possibly be solved yet offers multiple interpretations that each have a wisp of truth if not more. Jonathan Glazer has, for one reason or another, taken a near-decade-long break from feature filmmaking but makes a resounding, striking, and beautiful return with Under the Skin. Here is a film that could be seen as a statement on the intractable nature of femininity in the modern world; whatever agency, the film appears to argue, women have is afforded to them by men, who will take it away if they’re threatened. In the closing moments, Scarlett Johansson returns to the natural world, her physical presence so alien to the men in this film that she can only acquire an identity by leaving it behind. It is one of her finest performances to date, just as Under the Skin is the year’s best film to date.

— Josh Spiegel

Review #2

An alien life form comes to Earth disguised as a beautiful woman, to prey on unwary human males, seducing them and luring them to their doom. Nine times out of ten, a premise like that of Under the Skin would produce a crass, low-brow skin flick, psuedo-porn masquerading as science fiction. But director Jonathan Glazer seems to know this, and has performed the same bait and switch as the alien in the film, luring audiences in with the promise of eroticism and dropping them unawares into a disorienting, frightening landscape. But unlike the poor saps of the film, victims of Glazer’s seduction will come out with their internal organs still safe and sound in their body cavities, and a truly unique film experience to reflect on.

Under the Skin, quite intentionally, plays on a lot of tropes. There is the beautiful, otherworldly femme fatale who coldly stalks her victims before growing a conscience and discovering the joys of food, music, and of course, love. Of course, this prompts intervention from her seeming “handlers”, a group of sinister men on motorbikes. It feels like something we’ve seen before in countless B-level sci fi features, and the film is aware of this. During scenes of Johannson luring some poor fool to his doom, Mica Levi’s score will even descend into wailing violins that harken back to the warbling, spooky theremin scores of 40s sci-fi films. But just as much as Glazer wants its audience to feel familiar with the story, he also seems intent on proving just how differently he can tell it.

Under the Skin 2

With Under the Skin, Glazer reveals himself to be a master of nonverbal storytelling. Almost all of the information needed to understand just what is happening is communicated to the audience through visuals and acting. It is almost entirely devoid of exposition, and when one reaches out a hand for some guidance or understanding, the film seems to look back with a cold lack of sympathy. A lot of this comes from Daniel Landin’s starkly beautiful cinematography, which can make normal objects seem abstract and paint beautiful tableaux of the barren Scottish landscape the film is set against. Just as much comes from Scarlett Johansson’s performance, which is undoubtedly the most understated of her career. Her dialogue for the most part is incredibly minimal, and she carries most of it with simple facial expressions and body language.Under the Skin 3Knowing the details of the production makes Under the Skin an even stranger experience. Johansson is the only professional actor in the film, the rest of the cast being non-actors who were initially unaware they were even in a film, their initial conversations captured via hidden camera. This lends the film a distinctly voyeuristic quality, a sense of unease as the alien prowls the streets of various Scottish cities, picking up unsuspecting victims and silently observing passing people with the same cold dispassion as the camera itself. It feels about as far from Hollywood as possible, really, an odd blend of verite and something approaching surrealism.

While Under the Skin is easily a triumph of acting and cinematography, the storytelling is what one takes away the most. Glazer has succeeded in taking a very straightforward, staid sci-fi premise and telling it in a new and interesting way, dialing down the details, exposition and soft science and plugging in a brooding art-house mood. Although it has many virtues, especially when it comes to formal qualities and execution, its best seems to be its ability to make the old seem new again. Under the Skin takes tropes and scenes sci-fi fans have probably seen countless times over and makes them feel fresh and interesting again. And in a film climate as seemingly mired as much in repetition and cliché as science fiction currently is, that seems like nothing less than a miracle.

— Thomas O’Connor

Review #3

It’s about time that people start getting excited about Jonathan Glazer and his uniquely transcendent contributions to cinema. Under the Skin represents the director’s third film, a rabbit hole masterwork of baffling beauty and seduction spearheaded by a career best performance from Scarlett Johansson. Glazer returns after a nine-year hiatus, his last film – 2004’s Birth, mostly fell on deaf ears as a divisive dramatic/thriller. While Birth was in fact a nice sophomore success, Glazer drastically steps his game up with Under the Skin, an often troubling and beautiful film that should baffle and surprise in equal measure.

Loosely adapted from a novel by Michel Faber, Under the Skin follows Johansson’s unnamed brunette seductress (though IMDB lists her as “Laura”), as she rides around rain-soaked modern Glasgow, cunningly seducing young men before harvesting their bodies in uniquely abstract fashion. We receive no backstory on her character’s origin, though the film’s brilliant opening puts us in the odd and deranged mindset of someone going through a transformation; she’s clearly not of this world. She’s linked to a mysterious male overseer of sorts who speeds around the city on a motorcycle making sure that things go as planned.

The narrative is one of ugly and rigorous repetition, an opaquely rendered vision of the human soul and its carnal quest for physical and sexual attention. The many faces and bodies that the film centers on are those of pitiless want and need. Those lingering about the streets of Glasgow are consistently plunged into an engrossing void of nothingness as Johansson’s alien hunter infiltrates their being with effortless cause. The original score by Mica Levi quickly establishes the film’s singular strangeness and clinical droning nature. Each seduction is stranger than the one that precedes it, placing the audience in a zone of abstruse and rousing surfaces that never lets up.

Under the Skin

Glazer and cinematographer Daniel Landin summon up a slew of otherworldly images that push Under the Skin past traditional sci-fi territory and into a murky realm where ideas are vaguely hinted at and not entirely spelled out. There are echoes of Lynch, Grandrieux, and Kubrick here, but the much vaunted aesthetic is all Glazer. The images are ghastly, almost defiantly black in nature: a crying baby sitting alone on a beach at night, a disfigured man and his brief stint with compassion, a body entrenched in fire running furiously through the woods. All of these serve to disorient the viewer, especially in regards to the film’s harsh depiction of the body and the numerous intrusions seen here. There’s little natural beauty and warmth contained within this world, but when it seeps out, we can’t help but identify with the gracious acts of kindness that play out amid the indefinite sense that all hope is lost in this ominous setting.

While Glazer’s 2000 British gangster flick Sexy Beast was a mostly straightforward character study, Under the Skin manages to surpass Birth in its odd and austere nature. Johansson has never been better, portraying a figure that remains wholly unknown throughout. It’s to Johansson’s credit that we can come to sympathize with her character’s slowly morphing sense of compassion. Though her traditional arc runs its course, the narrative boldly shifts into more unattainable and bleak waters. Under the Skin is a true out-of-body experience, an idiosyncratic mainstay where Glazer calls to mind and reflects on the ways in which beauty and unsightliness play out in strange harmony together. It’s a fascinating and trying wonder that sticks out as the director’s best film so far, a work that will undoubtedly linger for a while.

— Ty Landis

Review #4

It’s not difficult to see why Jonathan Glazer′s 9-year hiatus from the big screen has been so protracted given the deeply uncommercial nature of his extremely disquieting new film Under The Skin. Carried aloft on a wave of five-star reviews from its Venice premiere, the film is based on the cult novel by Michel Faber, and on first sight seems to be a Lynchian reworking of Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, with Scarlett Johansson perfectly cast as a porcelain succubus, all raven hair and deadly crimson lips.

We gaze at the murky wastelands of Glasgow and the mist-drenched lochs through her unyielding eyes, an alien amongst us who may or may not be an extraterrestrial, or may just be from somewhere else. She preys on the young men of the city by luring them to her mysterious bolt-holes scattered around the city, occasionally accompanied by a similarly taciturn and strange motorcyclist accomplice who may be her mate, her collaborator, or her master. Many such elements in this film are left pendulous and garbled, like the fading purlieus of a poisonous nightmare.

Preferring fluidity to coherence, Under The Skin (and the film certainly achieves that goal in a prickly, narcoleptic sense) moves from encounter to seduction like a softly rotating fever dream, jettisoning the novel’s overt themes of corporatism, agronomy, and environmental dissolution in favour of an intensive excavation of sexual identity, social isolation, and wraithful dissolution. Cinematographer Dan Landin sculpts the rain-sodden streets of Glasgow with an infecting stream of inky blacks, distressingly accompanied by Micachu′s distorted nails-sliding-down-a-blackboard score, a tendrilous merging of the visual and aural to create at times a quite uncomfortable viewing experience, with little in the way of clarity or humor to leaven the droning atmosphere. Johannsson is a quiet revelation; her tensile movements and ability to emanate the feeling of crawling uncomfortably in her own skin complete the film’s vigorous lure. This is a career-best physical performance that stands in stark symbiosis with Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-nominated poise in Starman.

Repeated viewings will be required to crack the film’s obsidian carapace, as Glazer is obviously not in the business of handholding or signaling his overt intentions with this enigmatic return to the screen. The uncompromising intensity and storytelling ellipsis of Under the Skin seems sure to alienate potential viewers who may prefer their material more solidified and homogenized, but the film is destined for cult classic status, an uncompromising, haunting symphony on the paralyzing gaze of lust.

— John McEntee

Review #5

It’s about time that people start getting excited about Jonathan Glazer and his uniquely transcendent contributions to cinema. Under the Skin represents the director’s third film, a rabbit hole masterwork of baffling beauty and seduction spearheaded by a career best performance from Scarlett Johansson. Glazer returns after a nine-year hiatus, his last film – 2004’s Birth, mostly fell on deaf ears as a divisive dramatic/thriller. While Birth was in fact a nice sophomore success, Glazer drastically steps his game up with Under the Skin, an often troubling and beautiful film that should baffle and surprise in equal measure.

Loosely adapted from a novel by Michel Faber, Under the Skin follows Johansson’s unnamed brunette seductress (though IMDB lists her as “Laura”), as she rides around rain-soaked modern Glasgow, cunningly seducing young men before harvesting their bodies in uniquely abstract fashion. We receive no backstory on her character’s origin, though the film’s brilliant opening puts us in the odd and deranged mindset of someone going through a transformation; she’s clearly not of this world. She’s linked to a mysterious male overseer of sorts who speeds around the city on a motorcycle making sure that things go as planned.

The narrative is one of ugly and rigorous repetition, an opaquely rendered vision of the human soul and its carnal quest for physical and sexual attention. The many faces and bodies that the film centers on are those of pitiless want and need. Those lingering about the streets of Glasgow are consistently plunged into an engrossing void of nothingness as Johansson’s alien hunter infiltrates their being with effortless cause. The original score by Mica Levi quickly establishes the film’s singular strangeness and clinical droning nature. Each seduction is stranger than the one that precedes it, placing the audience in a zone of abstruse and rousing surfaces that never lets up.

Under the Skin

Glazer and cinematographer Daniel Landin summon up a slew of otherworldly images that push Under the Skin past traditional sci-fi territory and into a murky realm where ideas are vaguely hinted at and not entirely spelled out. There are echoes of Lynch, Grandrieux, and Kubrick here, but the much vaunted aesthetic is all Glazer. The images are ghastly, almost defiantly black in nature: a crying baby sitting alone on a beach at night, a disfigured man and his brief stint with compassion, a body entrenched in fire running furiously through the woods. All of these serve to disorient the viewer, especially in regards to the film’s harsh depiction of the body and the numerous intrusions seen here. There’s little natural beauty and warmth contained within this world, but when it seeps out, we can’t help but identify with the gracious acts of kindness that play out amid the indefinite sense that all hope is lost in this ominous setting.

While Glazer’s 2000 British gangster flick Sexy Beast was a mostly straightforward character study, Under the Skin manages to surpass Birth in its odd and austere nature. Johansson has never been better, portraying a figure that remains wholly unknown throughout. It’s to Johansson’s credit that we can come to sympathize with her character’s slowly morphing sense of compassion. Though her traditional arc runs its course, the narrative boldly shifts into more unattainable and bleak waters. Under the Skin is a true out-of-body experience, an idiosyncratic mainstay where Glazer calls to mind and reflects on the ways in which beauty and unsightliness play out in strange harmony together. It’s a fascinating and trying wonder that sticks out as the director’s best film so far, a work that will undoubtedly linger for a while.

— Ty Landis

Review #6

Stylistically brilliant in terms of the stark, vulnerable nudity it employs and deconstructs as anything but sexy, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin spectacularly dives off into the creative deep end of science fiction. From the outset, it opens up a promising can of worms containing the potentially complex interactions that beings from different worlds could have but it greatly disappoints by not following through and backing up the richly composed backdrops with substance beyond the extremely obvious. By hyper-focusing only on the instincts of the disparate organisms, reducing them to the basest of needs and leaving little to no room to believe that higher thought is remotely important to this species of alien or humanity, the lack of emotional connectivity leaves the the movie a hollow shell. The film incessantly keeps us aware of the fact that humans are just animals, afflicted by the frailty of their physical needs. Similarly, the extraterrestrial who is our main character (Scarlett Johansson) is condemned to stalk us for sustenance. We know nothing else about this creature other than she prowls the city streets and rugged wild of Scotland for men who more than willingly come along for rides with her in hopes of sex. It’s a plot that’s plumbed for all it’s worth and hypnotizes the viewer until one realizes that the reiteration of her acts keeps the content of the film in an unfulfilled, embryonic stage.

The visual grandeur of Scotland and the sexual abyss of death that the alien takes the men into are the greatest reasons to catch this movie. The abyss is mesmerizing and overwhelming, much like the sublime scenes of untamed Scotland we are treated to. One scene in particular is jaw-dropping as we journey into where she sends the men after their capture and we see what happens to their flesh. While it’s to be admired for how far out the film is visually, the repetition of the relentless death marches deny complete satisfaction in this effort, much like the alien’s poor prey never get the gratification they’re after.

This is such a devastatingly ugly take on the essence of existence that it’s a hard pill to swallow, especially when there’s nothing to help it go down. Johansson’s seductions are sleek, detached, and confident, but they nearly always accomplish the same end. We’re watching the preparation of a routine meal and the nudity is an act of business that hurries along the cooking. However tantalizing some might find this actress’ body or her method of seduction, the shock of the act wears off with recurrence. Her absolute stoicism is well suited to a part that contains no context, but not having an emotional register keeps the audience out of investing in much of anything. To get men to take off their clothes is seen as effortless and so there is no cleverness, real flirtatiousness, or game in the play.

More interesting than her disrobing are the bodies of the men she finds. In seeing every inch of them, we are able to examine how defenseless and easily crushed they are by the base desire that lures them into a black pool of lusty oblivion. The creative risk and stylistic reward in these scenes are  tangible, but then the frustrating circuitousness of her hunt almost always comes back around to the same conclusion. The end of these men is disturbing, engrossing, but ultimately empty. The throbbing, metronome-like music is a perfect accompaniment to the lopsidedness of the sexual attraction and the rhythm of copulation the men try to follow.

The movie leaves us wanting more outlandish situations involving her. We certainly don’t need an explanation for her actions, as it’s quite clear from the beginning that she utilizes men’s sexual weaknesses so she can manage their energy, but we aren’t treated to a change-up of the same scenario until far into the movie. Moviegoers do need a higher degree of satiation, something beyond just acts of sex or murder. We need to be fed wit visually or verbally to sustain our attention in a subject. That’s an important aspect of humans and how we’ve elevated ourselves above the impulses this film so dismally centers on. While the lighting, scenic vistas, and the creepy netherworld dazzle, they just don’t deliver enough pleasure to override the need for something more to attach to. Even though the seductions break the sci-fi mold, there is an immediate want for the film to fracture the pattern it sets for itself and expand to even more ambitious ideas.

Spotlighting carnal trappings leaves very little room for empathy as prey is seduced and annihilated. A disfigured man is pitiable at best for soaking up rare sexual attention given to him, but audiences are likely to be cold to this inexorably loathsome portrayal of humanity. The film falters, as emotion is left nearly completely out of the struggle for life. Sex and survival are indeed our root priorities but the inherent flaw in the gorgeously rendered spectacle of Under the Skin is that it doesn’t give us credit for any intelligence or being evolved enough to be able to fight off primal temptation with emotional incentive.

— Lane Scarberry

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