Back in the late 1990s, The Blair Witch Project became a word-of-mouth horror smash thanks to an ingenious marketing campaign which had people questioning whether it was real or fake.
It was all a ploy by the filmmakers to promote their found-footage movie, but more than two decades later, Skinamarink had social media users doing just the same – albeit unintentionally this time.
After the movie premiered at Fantasia International Film Festival, Skinamarink started to make waves on the genre festival circuit and got snapped up by Shudder. However, an error at a planned at-home festival screening led to the movie being leaked and pirated, with clips appearing on the likes of TikTok and Reddit.
People stumbling upon them with no concept of the movie's 'home movie' style had no idea what they were watching. All they knew is what they saw was absolutely terrifying and so the legend of Skinamarink was born.
But now that it's legitimately arrived in cinemas in the US and the UK, is it really one of the scariest movies of all time, as certain viewers have dubbed it? We're brave souls here at Digital Spy, so we dived right in.
Writer-director Kyle Edward Ball has made his name in nightmares, creating a YouTube channel where he recreates the terrible dreams that people send to him. Skinamarink was inspired by a nightmare he was constantly being sent and experiencing himself.
"The most commonly shared one was basically the same concept: 'I'm between the ages of 6 to 10. I'm in my house. My parents are either dead or missing, and there's a threat I have to deal with.' I was interested in that because I have a vivid nightmare from that time, too," he told Variety.
Initially that led to short movie Heck, which was then expanded upon to feature length as Skinamarink. The movie follows young brother and sister Kevin and Kaylee who wake in the middle of the night to find their father is missing. That would be bad enough, but then all the windows and doors in their home start to vanish...
Skinamarink tells the tale of that night (or is it longer?) as the siblings experience increasingly disturbing events. But don't go expecting a conventional horror with a beginning, middle and end with everything wrapped up neatly. It's not a movie to be understood – it's a movie to be experienced.
"I've had people DM me like, 'What? So what is this?' Also, it doesn't matter what I think any more. Now it's your movie. When I was shooting and editing it, I was like, 'This is how I want the viewer to feel.' It's been so amazing seeing people actually feel the way I planned it," Ball told Inverse.
Skinamarink is a movie that requires patience and commitment from the viewer. Across its 100-minute runtime, it could be called both dull and terrifying, but it's precisely that combination that makes it so compelling if you're willing to go along with it.
With an ultra-low budget of $15,000, Ball and assistant director Joshua Bookhalter – who sadly passed away during post-production – get creative with their scares.
The movie has a grainy old home-video style, filmed predominantly from low camera angles looking up and with action happening off-screen. Dialogue is sparse and sound is often muddled which, combined with the low lighting, forces you to concentrate to keep track of what's happening.
It's in that concentration that Skinamarink terrifies. You might just be watching a static shot of a doorway or a TV, but your horror mind is trained to expect a scare, which means you'll find them anywhere. Like a nasty magic-eye puzzle or a terrifying ASMR video, you'll start seeing things that aren't there.
With this experimental approach, the movie brilliantly evokes the feeling of your childhood where you really might have thought there were things that go bump in the night. At one point, Kaylee is told to "look under the bed" and whether you were scared of the dark or not, you'll be screaming at her not to.
While Skinamarink does skilfully employ jump scares, large chunks of the runtime go by without any relief.
You're constantly waiting for that sense of release you get when horror movies usually amp up the tension before a big scare, but this movie favours the tease more than the money shot. It can be quite exhausting to be on high alert waiting for the scare, which, in turn, leaves you more susceptible when it does come.
This does work both ways though, for there are large stretches of the movie where nothing really happens. It's why Skinamarink absolutely won't be for everybody as some could even zone out before it gets to the first sustained set piece, especially once it comes to streaming, where attention could wander.
At the cinema though, it'd be hard to avoid the dark pull of the movie as it slowly sucks you into its world. It might not be the scariest movie ever made for everybody, but you better hope there are no weird noises in your home after you watch it.
Skinamarink is out now on Shudder.
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