The first viewing of Under the Skin, impressed me with its pacing and it ominous tone. It’s a thriller / horror film without a clearly motivated killer. The unnamed femme fatale from another part of our or some other galaxy (Scarlett Johansson) trolls around Scotland, seeking out lonely, forsaken, and single men. What Under the Skin makes clear is that men will get into a strange, unmarked box truck providing Scarlett Johansson is behind the wheel. But aside from that, everything else is rather vague. This is not necessarily a bad thing, a film that spoonfeeds its audience, most specifically a horror film that does so, is a waste of time.
Ultimately, the men end up in a rather dilapidated house with Johansson, who gracefully removes her clothing, leaving a trail of enticing breadcrumbs behind her. As the naive Hansels follow, they begin to sink into the floor, which becomes a black viscous liquid until they are up to their necks, then their eyes, and then they are gone. The floor re-seals itself, Johansson gathers her costume and exits the house.
The men are gone and their wasted lives are put to an end.
And it’s this moment that has stuck with me for the last few months as I sat and ruminated on the film. Under the Skin is both readable as a commentary on our consumption of petroleum insomuch as it depicts an oil-like substance slowly consuming us for the greater good of an unknown interloper.
At the same time, it’s more readable as a critique of the hookup culture that we’ve become so familiar with. It’s quite interesting that all of them men met and consumed by Johansson and her floor are single and lonely. They seem to want nothing more than a fling. Those who are tied to someone else – a girlfriend, family, or a wife – are left alone. This is exposited a handful of times in between her ultimate victims. So, in this way, our killer has a heart and is psychopathically discerning.
If Under the Skin is truly a horror film, then its eeriness resides in the way in which the victims keep moving forward, as if seduced an unable to stop. Perhaps this is Johansson’s secret gift. (Potential legal disclaimer: I apologize for continuing to use her name, but she – and everyone else – go unnamed in the script, so while Johansson may be irresistible, I’m not trying to intimate that she’s killing men in her basement.) Or perhaps its director Johnathan Glazer’s way of suggesting that our libidos are creating such a separation between us and society that we have no other recourse for pleasure but to follow them. The men consumed seem to have – like our villain – nothing else to live for. They wander darkened streets, they haunt dimly lit night clubs, and they appear hardly missed.
To break the monotony, our villain is given a heart when she sees how much one of her victims genuinely wants human contact – presumably on account of some gross physical deformities. He is lonely and he is forsaken, but he doesn’t completely fit her requirements, so he is ultimately released, and she begins a journey of self-exploration, attempting to understand the allure of the physical.
However, Under the Skin fails to become less cynical. Rather, it suggests that the woman-as-seductress will either achieve little or no pleasure, or succumb to a worse fate at the hands of aggressive men.
I’ve really wanted this film to be about the overconsumption of oil and our fate as a petroleum-dependent country. Unfortunately, Under the Skin highlights the disparities between the sexes in a culture so familiar with sex.
