{"id":15632,"date":"2014-12-10T02:03:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T07:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=15632"},"modified":"2015-06-18T02:11:52","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T06:11:52","slug":"under-the-skin-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/10\/under-the-skin-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Under the Skin (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"uts\"<\/a>Girl drives. Girls picks up guy. Girl lures guy into black muck. Girl drives. Girls picks up guy. Girl lures guy into black muck. Girl drives. And that\u2019s the gist of \u201cUnder the Skin.\u201d I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019d recommend \u201cUnder the Skin\u201d to even the most open minded arthouse buff. It\u2019s not to say that \u201cUnder the Skin\u201d is awful. It\u2019s just an experience that won\u2019t lend well to repeated viewings. Especially when you consider that much of what occurs is either explicitly stated and or subtly hinted at for ambiguity. For the sake of science fiction, much of \u201cUnder the Skin\u201d is obvious, while director Glazer also vies for a gritty realism that\u2019s sorely out of place when we see it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Supposedly the encounters of Johannsen\u2019s character with men on the side of the road in Scotland as she attempts to pick them up in her van were real. The director didn\u2019t inform the men they were being filmed. This is especially true when her character meets a young man with a form of Neurofibromatosis, which makes his face look completely deformed. She engages in a conversation with him and asks him to touch her face, as a means of opening up to him. So what of the scene where he strips only to be engulfed in her black pool? Did they inform him and somehow convince him to take part in the film? I\u2019m not sure I buy that. In either case, \u201cUnder the Skin\u201d is based mostly around cryptic moments filled with many montages, brilliant photography, and no dialogue.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s definitely a science fiction film with tones of horror, but nothing is ever really menacing per se. Johannsen plays an alien who takes the appearance of a young woman, and spends her days driving around Scotland attempting to pick up young men. She then lures them to her house and they\u2019re engulfed in a black pool to be digested. The character is either feeding the house, or herself, it\u2019s never really indicated. All that there really is, is the character driving around silently, and attempting to lure men to her home. Johannsen is perfect for this character as her body is outstanding, and she\u2019s incredibly sexy. It\u2019s easy to see why any man would be seduced by her during the narrative. One scene in particular catches her walking through crowds in a mall, and she doesn\u2019t even seem to be trying for alluring, even though she\u2019s oozing sexuality. If there\u2019s anyone right now that can play seductress it\u2019s Johannsen.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the Skin\u201d \\always seems to be heading in to interesting territory, with perhaps interesting commentary about humanity, but it meanders again and again in to an aimless narrative with no real sense of character direction. That seems to have rendered it a favorite, but I just thought it was often monotonous. We know the character isn\u2019t particularly keen to humans, and has a change of heart mid-way that\u2019s woefully underplayed. It\u2019s all so under developed and side stepped that we never get a sense of any of the characters. Thus when the striking climax occurs, there\u2019s no inherent emotion mustered up. Granted, the direction is stunning, the score is excellent, and \u201cUnder the Skin\u201d is perfectly fine. I\u2019m just not sure I\u2019ll ever see it again unless I have to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Girl drives. Girls picks up guy. Girl lures guy into black muck. Girl drives. Girls picks up guy. Girl lures guy into black muck. Girl drives. And that\u2019s the gist of \u201cUnder the Skin.\u201d I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019d recommend \u201cUnder the Skin\u201d to even the most open minded arthouse buff. It\u2019s not to say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[111,302,477,906,1087,1134],"class_list":["post-15632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-arthouse","tag-drama","tag-horror","tag-science-fiction","tag-thriller","tag-u"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15636,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632\/revisions\/15636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}