Repost: Under the Skin (July 10th and 11th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[UNDER THE SKIN screens Thursday July 10th at 7:45 pm and Friday July 11th at 9:15 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Jonathan Glazer's sci-fi movie UNDER THE SKIN was ten years in the making. “It was very easy to spend that much time on the film,” says the director, best known for SEXY BEAST.” “I wanted to keep going [to] make something that...was a kind of experience that matched the perspective of the character.”

It is an experience, all right, but not necessarily the kind most viewers will embrace. The movie stars the ubiquitous Scarlett Johansson as an alien who inhabits the body of a young woman and roams the Scottish Highlands in a van, luring young hitchhikers to their deaths. Not all of this plot exposition is obvious to the audience, who after watching this highly abstract, nearly dialogue-free film, may wonder what the hell it was all about. The cinematography and effects are often mesmerizing, and were this a film-school exercise or twenty-minute short for art class, it would deserve an 'A.' But a theatrical film should not ask an audience to watch an arty exercise for an hour-thirty-eight and essentially make up its own story.

Under The Skin

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Jonathan Glazer's sci-fi movie UNDER THE SKIN was ten years in the making. “It was very easy to spend that much time on the film,” says the director, best known for SEXY BEAST.” “I wanted to keep going [to] make something that...was a kind of experience that matched the perspective of the character.”


It is an experience, all right, but not necessarily the kind most viewers will embrace. The movie stars the ubiquitous Scarlett Johansson as an alien who inhabits the body of a young woman and roams the Scottish Highlands in a van, luring young hitchhikers to their deaths. Not all of this plot exposition is obvious to the audience, who after watching this highly abstract, nearly dialogue-free film, may wonder what the hell it was all about. The cinematography and effects are often mesmerizing, and were this a film-school exercise or twenty-minute short for art class, it would deserve an 'A.' But a theatrical film should not ask an audience to watch an arty exercise for an hour-thirty-eight and essentially make up its own story.