The Cruelty of Skinamarink
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.พ. 2023
- This video analyzes the cruelty and deepness to the horror of the film Skinamarink. Make sure to watch it on Shudder, and support the artists!
Apologies in advance for the audio during the white-board segments. When I realized the resurgence of interest for this film on TH-cam, I rushed to complete editing for the video, but I think I've done a solid job. This is the longest video I've ever made, and my first video essay.
I made sure to not watch any explanation or review videos for the research of this video essay, so I can give my personal guarantee that what you'll watch/listen to will be totally original(in principal), but it could totally be the case that everything I've talked about is old news, so in that case, just chalk it up to parallel thinking, lol.
Support the channel, no pressure:
patreon.com/FlawPeacock
"Holy Crap, Lois! We are at 100 freaking views" - Peter Griffin (probably)
I appreciate the support and love. I wanted to apologize for the demonstrative footage from the movie being so darkened to the point of not being able to see anything at certain points.
The intention for obscuring the footage was so that people who haven't seen the movie won't use this video to watch it for free. No shade intended at synopsis channels or the people who watch them, but I dont want my videos to serve that purpose.(And of course to keep the channel in good standing, copyright wise. Although i believe my video to be transformative enough on its own merit.)
Problem is I obscured them to the point that some scenes are unrecognizable. This is seen especially in the part where I analyze the final scene. The footage is darkened so much you don't see the spooky face! What a blunder.
Thanks for all your patience during the growing pains of this project.
You deserve it for watching the entire movie without skipping through it. 😆
W bro
I'm glad youtube offered this great movie to stream but I watched it on my laptop with puffy headphones at 2am!!!! Oh man what a great movie very unnerving.
Well-deserved!
You think you're slick huh? Making the stick figures portray what happens to them in the movie
For me the horror of this comes from the idea of doing your best and doing everything right, but you still fail because you never actually had a chance. These kids did their best in the situation they were trapped in. In the beginning when they're initially isolated, they call a long phone number (possibly another family member, I presumed mom because I don't think she's dead, just divorced), and then they call the police, and they call the police multiple times. When that doesn't work they knew to stick together and picked a spot where they felt safest. They took care of each other, saying "I love you," playing together, watching TV, Kevin giving Kaylee the juice box to make her feel better, etc. No toilet? Use a bucket. There's a chair on the ceiling? Not good, let's be quiet now. Something weird happened upstairs and we need to use the couch as a barricade. Say no more.
These kids did not die or get trapped in a hellish purgatory because they were asshole kids or stupid, they were just pitted against some sort of reality warping monster that finds joy in suffering. THAT is what scares me the most.
It's definitely giving Magnus Archives levels of malevolent power vs helpless non-understanding
It really is what terrifies me the most. It’s literally an evil being torturing an innocent for no reason. Evil for evils sake.
@@bananaboatcharlie no wonder I like it so much lmao
If I’ve learned anything in a situation like this it’s important to assert your dominance. I would have shit on the floor and then smoke it like a blunt to stunt on the demon
Actually the demon tortured the kids when they didn't follow it's orders, that's why Kevin survives and the demon tells him to go to sleep, its like it wants to raise them for some unknown reason.
Skinamarink is true cosmic horror. The genre have been largely boiled down or misconstrued into "weird looking monsters that makes people goes crazy when you see them" when the actual essence of the genre is "humanity absolutely helpless in the face of a power immeasurably strong that does not even really care about us".
Lovecraft used the motif of marine animals because those are the things that unnerved him personally, Cthulhu is an octopus-like entity because to him cephalopods are the most repulsive creature on earth he could thought of. In contrast, Ball was inspired by the terror of late night suburbian children who have to go downstair in the middle of the night for water, and just like Lovecraft he shaped this fear into an exaggerated almighty force.
YES! 👏👏👏👏
Yeah, this pretty much
Well, livecrafts monsters for the most part didn't actively hate humans, whereas the monster I'm skinamarink is actively torturing kids although I might be wrong about that
@@patriciahartley8570 Bro, he's talking about the director Kyle Edward Ball, not the demon. Where'd that come from?
@@patriciahartley8570 He will never be baalin- 😳
Knowing how sadistic the entity is I wouldn't be surprised if the reason she called out "mommy" is because the monster took her form to kill her over and over
oh dear god
I just took it as her being in pain and crying out for her mommy to protect her, I do see the movie as a metaphor for children growing up in an abusive home, and the TV was the safety of childhood innocence. I think their mom did her best to protect them, but then somehow (possibly suicide but not 100% on that) she died, and there was nothing left to protect them, as the movie goes on, the TV gets distorted and the facade of safety it provided shatters before it finally gets turned off.
That's what I assumed when watching. The entity appeared as their mother before on the edge of the bed. I think it's taking the form of the mother intentionally because
A) Something upsetting already happened with the mother making them not want to talk about her, and
B) what's more terrifying than being tortured and hurt by someone you're supposed to be able to trust and rely on for your safety and well-being (and love).
My theory is that the kids are in an abusive household and this is purgatory. They are living out the abuse that killed them forever. Their mom killed them, pushed Kevin down the stairs in the beginning too, and that's why Kevin doesn't like to talk about mom. "Your dad and I love you" is what the mother says to Kaylee before she tells her to go downstairs, like an abusive parent telling their kid they love them as they hurt them.
@@neonrelmsproductions4224 Ooh, that's fucked.
When Kevin asks “Can we watch something happy?” I took it as the Skinamarink showing him something happy, the skinamarink itself. He shows himself to Kevin to tell him how happy he is to torture him.
congrats my friend, you just ruined my night 😭
that’s a demon for you. 😅
jesus 😅
When Kevin went upstairs and we are following his perspective, I noticed that the left side of the screen had a blurred orange hue that I associated with the pain of Kevin's damaged eye. I don't recall seeing that coloring or effect prior to that scene, so it stood out to me as seeing it literally from Kevin's view.
why ain’t there no comments
@@GULU_GULU_i lol I didn't even realize I had so many likes on this comment.
@@BeRadMH lol
Why is there only 3 replies?
why are there only 5 replys and each of them is talking about the number of replys
I needed the mental health break too. Also, I don’t think anyone needs to, “grow a pair,” if watching children being literally tortured bothers them. I think that’s like, the BASIC level of being human.
If low effort shock horror scares you, you do need to grow a pair. You need to go out of your way to be scared of stuff like that
@@cabbose12 When you're an adult you'll understand caring about children.
@@cabbose12 chill, you don't even know the difference between shock horror and dread horror
@@deviontebenjamin5187 I'm being generous calling it shock
@@paddyret7968 Guys a kid is hurt in a horror movie!!! It's scary!!! Be scared why aren't you scared??? What do you mean you're just disappointed I'm using kids as low effort horror??? It's scary it's bad!!
I read one theory about the nature of whatever the Skinamarink is supposed to be that I found fascinating and disturbing. Consider what the Skinamarink does: it makes all the adults go away, it watches the same cartoons over and over and over again, it gathers up toys like its hording them, it's vocabulary seems no more advanced than the kids, gets aggressively angry when things don't go its way, and so possessive of its preferred child as to isolate them completely. The things it does to the kids and the house, while disturbing and sadistic, are hardly complex, clever, or elaborate, and doesn't seem to show any advanced intelligence or even real desire beyond the same routine of watching TV, playing with legos, and sleeping hundreds and hundreds of times. In short, the Skinamarink is a toddler. Not in the sense of its age, but rather its level of emotional complexity. Heck, the name "Skinamarink" is from the chorus of a children's song.
He did a little trolling
He got too silly
Sounds like a textbook narcissist. Like adults who don't get their way. The kind that becomes abusive. Like, when the mom dies, the narcissistic father becomes someone that the kids don't recognize. He can't deal with the kids so he becomes abusive.
That could be why the cartoons mirror how they perceive their world. The kids only have the option to learn from each other and TV. Dad's obviously going to let the TV raise them because he doesn't want to.
Young kids block out trauma. What if the dress raises the chair because he's lagging out at the kids? The older girl knows how to change her behavior and encourages her brother to do likewise. She disobeys her dads and doesn't go upstairs. He does something to her that makes her change. She then withdraws into herself.
The brother doesn't recognize her. He doesn't think she can see her or speak to her because she doesn't. So, in his mind, he must Believe she CAN'T do those things. She loves him, right? She becomes so withdrawn, it's like she's not even there.
He's left alone in this world. He annoys his dad and he physically abused him. Head trauma in kids is pretty easy to include. He also listens to his dad, when it comes to the knife. He won't take him to the doctor, cause he'd be taken to jail. So the kid sleeps it off. Kids heal quickly.
The boy finally calls the police. Dad walks in, panics and takes the phone. Shoves the toy phone in it's place and talks with the dispatcher to diffuse the situation. The boy then learns that what he does doesn't matter.
But the whole thing seems like the kids dissociating the father to his actions. That's why the boy asks what it's name is. It's not "dad" anymore. He knows he's stuck with whatever this is.
Either interpretation is absolutely terrifying. An unnamed malicious entity or the progression of abuse children can't escape. The words after"Skinimerink" are "I Love You". Whatever the Skinimerink is, it's implied that it loves them. That's my head cannon. Reality is scarier to me than a cosmic horror that picks on kids. Imagining that that's happening to a neighbor or a student you see everyday. Some kid walking with their parents in a grocery store. That they have to live like that day after day, year after year and they don't know why. It's just how it is. Living in terror with someone they don't recognize anymore.
@@angelface925 I ain’t reading allat 😭😭
@@The_scrongler1978 ha! No worries 😁
@@angelface925 I will! Pretty cool interpretation.
To me, the Skinamarink telling Kevin "I can do anything" is one of the most chilling parts. It truly gets revealed there that the kids never stood a chance, and they are literally the plaything of this being who is actually evil and can make them suffer fates worse than death.
By the way, when we see those pictures of Kaylee and Kevin, I think they're literally being shown to us, the viewer. I don't think there's any metaphor there. The kids aren't just missing, they've been erased from the reality they were dragged from to the point where they even disappear from physical pictures, possibly official records and people's memories as well. Nobody will know what happened.
100% agree, that was such a good line
I think this is the scariest possible explanation. The idea that they’re in a reality where they can’t escape, and the worst part is that nobody in the actual realm remembers they exist or knows they’re missing, so nobody is coming to help. It’s pure helplessness.
I can’t believe Jevil would do this.
@@cheatcode436 Jevil VS Skinamarink
It definitely reminded me of Donnie Darko, when Frank tells Donnie "I can do anything I want. And so can you."
28:17 this cartoon is called the cobweb motel, which is about a spider who runs a fake motel to trap and kill flies. That sticks with me cause that implies the skinamarink has done this several times before
Does this mean that children will eventually be freed or killed in the end? I mean, it can probably only be in one house at a time.
@@watchmychannelorelseconsidering the toy box analogy it’s possible that it simply keeps many “toys” and rotates between playing with ones it already has and occasionally getting new ones.
@@Somerandomjingleberry But toys can be lost, forgotten, or just get old after a while.
@@watchmychannelorelse Very correct, and that's very likely what that big pit at the end of the big empty hallway is. Forgotten, old toys
parallels to Coraline on this one
I noticed that the floating Barbie doll has its back towards Kaylee, facing the wall, her hands are up on the wall with it’s forehead on them. I think that this is the Skinamarink’s way of saying that it’s playing hide and go seek. At the beginning of the movie it was hiding in the closet but now it’s seeking.
Ooh, clever! I didn't think of it like that!
I like that and wouldn't have thought about that
Yes !!!!
I watched this movie with my sister. At the end, she turned to me and asked me in a serious tone "is this how you felt when Grandpa left you alone in the dark out side?".
When I was younger, about three,we had a swing set. I was too little to sit on it without falling, so my dad and grandpa got these straps and would tie me to the swing so I wouldn't fall. One night, I was on the swing set, my grandpa pushing me and having fun. It was well into the night. My grandpa had to do something in his house right quick so he went inside and I left alone outside in the dark.
In my childish imagination, I saw things in the shadows. Scary things. (In hindsight, I'm pretty sure it was my dad walking in the yard, but I couldn't recognize him) Very quickly I began to panic, because it was dark and I was scared, but I was tied to the swing and couldn't move. I remember screaming and crying for my grandpa. I don't remember what happened afterwards.
To this day, I am terrified of the dark, so I answered my sisters "yes".
I’m sorry that happened
Wait so your dad was walking around outside and didn't think to take you back in when you were so obviously scared? That's messed up.
holy fxck, that’s gonna fxck up a person for life. i hope you get some help to work through this. i’m really sorry this happened and i hope you are ok!
You poor baby that's horrible!!! I can't believe that your grandfather did that! I mean, I'm sure he obviously didn't mean to hurt you, but dang!
For me it's more horrifying that the entity's end goal just seems to be tormenting the kids.
There's no reasoning behind why it'd want to torture them, punishing them simply because it derives joy from it. When you realize that it makes the movie even scarier.
That point just makes me angry, not scared
IMO I think that the 'entity' is really just the subsconsciousness of grown-up Kevin, the dreamer, who is immersing himself in fragmented childhood memories and primal fears. The entity is unnerving, but no longer frightening or holds power over him when he asks to watch something happy. The 'monster' in the film is the dreamer's own mind.
It's playing with it's toys until it gets bored and breaks them
250th like
The point, is it's playing. The creature torments the children no different than a child torments the toy.
I love the use of 2 birthdays instead of years or days because to a child, that's how they differentiate or tell the passing of time and it just makes it more gut wrenching
Can u please explain how 572 days are connected to two birthdays?
@@asifmuhammed6164 say your birthday is on April 1st.
572 days is the same as one year and 207 days.
say the days start counting on Jan 1st, 1995.
after 572 days, or one year and 207 days, it will be July 25th, 1996.
April 1st happens twice during that time period, even though a full two years haven't passed.
hence "two birthdays"
@princesswhorecomplex
That's a really cool point!
I think you're right.
It's like describing your age as "twelve and a half." Kids tend to tack on the "and a half" when relevant.
When it was at the head-ripping scene and one of the kids screamed for their mom, I had to pause and cry because it hurt me so much, and then in the cruelest burst of nostalgia, it reminded me of popping the heads off my dolls to switch the bodies.
Omg I remember doing that too. Although sometimes I'd forget to put the heads back on or couldn't so I played with my toys headless
Fewer things are scarier than realizing you have as much in common with the predator as you do the prey, what he does is unspeakably cruel, yet have I not done horrible things to my “toys” too? It makes it worse to realize you somehow understand the mindset of such an uncaring monster. Then again, my “toys” aren’t a pair of children, aren’t alive, don’t go to the bathroom, and don’t scream for their mommy after repeatedly getting their heads torn apart, so my conscious is clear in skinning this demon and turning it’s body into toilet paper.
@@potatoboy6094 Jesus, man, you're overanalyzing how you treat a toy that isn't shown to think much less realistically react to the world around it
@@purest_evil I know, I’m not seriously implying you’re evil for messing around with toys, it’s an innocent and healthy way of exploring the world and it’s mechanics. I feel no guilt for swapping pieces of an inanimate object around. Sometimes satiating curiosity can have moral costs, better a toy than a living creature after all. Our similarities with the skinamarink start and end with the moral ambiguity of fucking with things to see how they work. But we have baked in morals and empathy for anything we feel a connection to, sometimes even inanimate objects such as toys. In horror especially, the bad guy/monster is usually a twisted reflection of us in some way or aspect; all of our flaws with none of our virtues, the skinamarink is a spoiled brat mutilating and breaking its toys apart for no real reason but the fact that it can, the same way a child would play with Lego bricks and Barbie dolls, their careless nature being the ultimate proof of *perfect* innocence, so pure they cannot even *comprehend* evil. But that is why the skinamarink is a vile monster, it’s punishing the perfectly innocent in an “eye for an eye” manner for no reason, they cannot even sin and yet they are tortured because of factors outside of their control. That’s why *I* hope to be included in the sequel so I can RIP the skinamarink’s FUCKING BALLS OFF, and save those poor mega traumatized toddlers! and that’s why I’m scared and pissed me and that sadistic motherfucker have ANY similarities at all, on ANY level, because that means it’s a dark reflection of what humanity is CAPABLE of! and it’s a warped reality I pray no child will ever have to bear.
@@potatoboy6094 Now that's an impact statement I can respectfully acknowledge and agree with, whoa
My headcannon is that father Garcia from Faith breaks into the pocket dimension and purifies this thing so hard that it even vanishes from Hell. Then Kevin grows up to help him hunt demons.
this is canon
-Geralt of Rivia pulling a "1408" and using Igni to set things on fire until the demon can't take it anymore and lets him out
-The repeated blood splatter is actually Doomguy repeatedly caving its head in with his bare hands
Also, because of the kitchen knife incident, adult demon hunter Kevin probably has a badass eyepatch
DO NOT BE AFRAID JOHN
wdym this has been canon since the movie came out🗣️🗣️🗣️
My heart dropped twenty minutes in when i realized the reason the film was being filmed the way it was, was because something terrible was going to happen to the two kids.
I thought the scariest part was when it was dark but you could see the outline of the toy phones eyes and face and it truly looked terrifying because you didn’t know what it was
You're admitting the scariest part of this movie was a toy phone. that's brave of you. Bc that fear is gone literally forever once you realize it's a toy phone lol.
@@taylorconnor2315 yeah but the thing about the movie is perspective + analog horror. Once those lights go out, the eyes could’ve become literally anything (like the strange voice)
Valid that phone fucked me up for a sec. I just remember being like oh god wtf is that?! I felt a little silly once it was revealed but like if I’d been the kids age and seen those peepers in the dark. Nope nope nope Time to cry 😂
I literally grabbed my chest like I was in an old movie, when those eyes came on screen. Even after you see what it is, and the lights go back out, it’s still hard to convince your brain, “It’s still just the toy phone.” truly terrifying
Only scary part tbh
I think Kevin losing his identity is right, i mean think about it, two birthdays in the dark, in the quiet, i doubt he's seen himself in the mirror in all that time
Plus the real horror is that during those 570 days we dont know how many times kaylee and kevin were killed and brought back to life just for the Skin to continue playing its cruel games with them.
@@reesetwist2290 Exactly, we'll never know, we'll never even know how long 1 of those 570 days lasted, I imagine the skinamarink could have stretched a second into a month, maybe even an eternity
@@plaguedoctor323 wouldn’t it be cruelly hilarious if they somehow escaped and they’d only been gone a few minutes
@@LizLuvsCupcakes That would be so insanely cruel
@@plaguedoctor323 "dad!! We’re back!!!"
"Of course we are- head on up to bed, I’ll bring Kevin in a while."
The scariest part for me is the fact that this is happening to TODDLERS.
Dam I haven’t watched it yet toddlers? That sucks but it shouldn’t be that bad givin toddlers mostly wouldn’t understand blood and gore and not be affected so this should be fine lmao
@@_ducksareresponsibleforww3_ oh how wrong you are
@@_ducksareresponsibleforww3_ 😐
@@_ducksareresponsibleforww3_ Children have the most vulnerable and impressionable minds, rethink your view.
@@_ducksareresponsibleforww3_they are literally getting jaws ripped open there not gonna be fine bru 💀
Honestly, I think interpreting this movie literally is the most disturbing way to think about it, because it means you can't hide behind layers of metaphor and analogy. You have to come to terms with the fact that this movie is about two children being isolated and brutally tortured for the entertainment of an entity they can't understand, hide from or fight against.
i dunno if someone mentioned this already, but the cartoon near the beginning after the scene where kaylee looks under the bed isnt just "a monster tormenting two creatures," i recognize that cartoon! its specifically a spider, if i'm not mistaken. a spider who creates a fake hotel to trap flies inside to eat them. i feel like this is very explicitly related to the events of the movie; two flies caught in a spider's web of said spider's creation.
You are exactly right! Now I want to go back to just re-watch the cartoons. I remember the spider, the birds, the little kids going to sleep and to heaven ,the dog and rabbit and the crows which all had meaning but what if I missed something!
Cobweb Hotel, immediately recognized it as it was on one of those very old cartoon collection dvds I watched as a kid
@@AppalachianHag no, i dont believe so! all of the cartoons are ones within the public domain! i saw the spider hotel one specifically as a child before this movie's creation
@@AppalachianHag according to another commenter in this thread, the spider one is called cobweb hotel, but i never watched the other cartoons! i'm sure someone has compiled a list of some sort that has all of their names
The concept of the “house” being the monster’s toy box is such a chilling and interesting one. Really adds something to the discourse around this film. Great work, dude.
If you like that, you'll love House of Leaves =)
@@FTZPLTC Do you know where to get that?? (Besides Amazon). I've only ever heard great things ab it and I fuckin love architecture horror (whatever it's called)
@@yeethittter1285 - I got it out of my local library way back when. It's expensive for a book but a relatively quick and easy read.
@@FTZPLTC house of leaves is most definitely not an easy nor quick read
@@daffodille - I dunno, i got through it pretty quickly and I'm normally a pretty slow reader. It has a decent pace to it.
As a kid, your house is usually the safest and most comfortable place. But as night comes and things grow dark, our own home becomes a place of fear. Whether it be the basement, the closet, or some other place, as a kid when your safest place becomes dark and scary, that's something of real fear. This movie captures that perfectly to me
Just like when a child suffers domestic abuse 😪Just like Kevin, I'll have to watch something happy. Otherwise, I WILL get angry
It makes me sad that said nature truly exists in human beings
You may have already seen it, but Jacob Geller does a video about haunted houses that touches on that same core idea. It’s excellent.
@@bridgeraldThat sounds interesting af. Is Jacob Geller on TH-cam
@@heather-ze7mf Yup! He does some of the best stuff on the platform :) lmk what you think!
The way the final face's features blur in and out, dance, and move with the grain is exactly what it feels like to look at something in the dark and be unsure of its exact shape because your eyes keep blurring and distorting it. It's so well done. It touches the primal fear of the unknown.
It reminds me of faces I would see on my ceiling in the dark as a child when I was half-asleep. Personally I like to interpret the final face as the protagonist's adult consciousness starting to wake up at the end of the nightmare.
you all must have special eyes because when he said "thats a face" i replayed that hit 6 times and i still cant see a damn thing.
@@goodheavens402 For some reason a lot of the footage he used from the movie is darker than it actually is in-movie. The face isn't hard to see in the film itself.
The “Skinamarink” can’t be seen transforming or be seen at all, hence why it tried to take out the lights and quickly turns into a chair because it was almost caught. It’s also the mother and father on the bed that’s why it keeps saying to look under the bed or close your eyes so it can transform. I also think the Skinamarink is using what happens in the tv to learn how to play with the children. I think the Skjnamarink is the snake doll watching tv learning about the Disappearing rabbit. It’s also the rolling phone which is why it has scary eyes in the dark.
It's not very good at camouflage and disguise
@@bezoticallyyours83if it was good at camouflage it wouldn’t be a very interesting movie huh
I wouldn't say that at all. It might have made the movie better
"The toilet is gone now."
I really thought I got over my phase of: fart with reverb = funny, but I'm glad this video proved me wrong when paired with that phrase.
I had to clip it immediately when I heard it lol th-cam.com/users/clipUgkxkjSOs-4AO7UNhU1VJPoODE_ZtprjvGS5
289th like and 1st reply
404 like and second reply
Literally just got done screenrecording that part and sending it to my partner lmaoo, it’s too good
@PixelsPolygonsNPetrichor
What are we meant to do with that information?
The director said that he did have a story in mind for this, but he simply won’t say it so viewers can be imaginative, but the closest clue we’re given is that it is “like a Hansel and Gretal story”
Brother and sister trapped in a house with a monster? That checks out
@@PurpleColonelThe kids are abandoned and left to fend for themselves. In this case, probably against their own mother and father, or the monster that turned into them.
That sound depicted when you see Kaylee's face, and that you heard after a nightmare...people who are in a critical situation like a shooting or other similarly intense scenario report hearing a sound like a muffled waterfall, which is actually hearing one's own blood pumping, rushing as their heart pounds so hard & quick. Which would actually makes sense in those situations.
Thank god someone is drawing parallels with the cartoons. They are the ones that literally drive the narrative of the film. They tell you everything that is happening
i love that you are looking at the story in a literal sense, so many people want to just blow it off like “trauma, abuse, metaphors, etc” and while that is probably it, actually trying to make sense of the world and what is happening is so much more interesting
Kinda annoyed by "child abuse" theory rn, because people projected onto this movie so hard they think it's the only valid interpretation
@@spinach001 I wouldn't say that's untrue though? It's not a bad thing to project, in fact I think it's important to use your experiences to interpret forms of art.
I also think it's ok to view art in more than one way. Maybe it's about a divorce AND a literal monster, and that's not a bad thing to think. I do think it's pretty rude to invalidate peoples interpretations because you don't like ppl using their experiences to understand art.
@@madisonb8163 it could be a supernatural force that latched onto a family in a bad situation. An accident , abuse, a divorce and a demon that shoved into the cracks and twisted everything into a loop.
Exactly! It’s not an open and shut or black and white case. Ppl need to go deeper than that.
@@spinach001 that’s kind of what art is supposed to do lol
Phenomenal video.
I was born in 1984. Dad started beating my younger brother and me when I was about 7. We'd hide under beds a lot... the view from down there shows up in this movie a few times. His voice would bellow from dark hallways to come, or get to bed, or turn that tv down. Mom never helped us (mommy!). We couldn't call the police without risking our literal lives (turned it into a smiley phone with eyes). He'd make light of our injuries ("Didn't even need stitches.")
Even though Dad was there..."Dad" wasn't there. This beast was there instead. And, like the blood splatter on repeat, we'd endure the torments for over ten years.
I think this movie is the most accurate portrayal of what it feels like to be a child living in a cyclical nightmare of abuse with no escape (no doors or windows).
"What's your name?... "What's your name?"
Trauma.
To me the scariest thing about this film is that, no matter what you think is happening, be it a real haunting, a coma or limbo after death, the terror experienced through the minds of the children (or one of them at least) is still there, in no reality is there even a hint of comfort
One of the explanations I watched said that he thought the parents are drug addicts, and the “Skinamarink” represents the fear and neglect children with drug addicted parents experience. The range of interpretations of this movie are nuts.
Since the beginning, even though I have a more literalist interpretation, I always had a feeling that the interpretations that have a sort of thru-line of themes of neglection would be the most accurate.
I hate this conclusion. It’s really not that open and shut of a thing, it has a much more thoughtful/profound meaning to find then something so on-the-surface.
I've heard of it being a metaphor for the scared and isolated feelings a kid goes through during a divorce. Based especially on the scene with the mum talking
@@shannond1511 🤷♂️ I think whatever message ppl want to take from it is valid. Honestly I usually take movies extremely literally so I like seeing others dig deeper and get their own conclusion
I feel like both can be true though you know? A demon can come in and actually possess the characters AND it can be commenting on something else thematically. That doesn't take away from either.
I do wonder if the ending - the reason for the end - is that Kevin accepts the Skinamarink. He's willing to ask it to show him something happy, rather than just react to the things that it does one way or another; and to ask it what its name is, and talk to it like a real thing. I feel like, at that point, the Skinamarink got what it wanted, which was to manipulate Kevin into no longer treating it like a monster or a threat.
The movie's monster always gives me that vibe of old folklore, where names are very important, where little things like looking at something or being recognised by it can have this tremendous power because these beings are of a completely other world with very different rules. It seems like its goal is to replace things, people, relationships and memory that we already accept, in order to gain reality. The photographs make me think that it wants to show Kevin that the state his sister is in is just the state that she's always been in - to replace his memories with what something that will make the monster easier to accept.
Isn’t this kind of sort of like what actual child kidnappers actually do to kids? Gaslight them into thinking that this is just their new life, that the kidnapper is their parent, and everything else should just be forgotten?
On top of the idea of a neglectful father, the monster could be seen as a dramatic exaggeration of child kidnapping.
And ya wanna know what happens a bit more often than a random stranger kidnapping random kids? Custody fights.
The blurred out face of the mother and the barely made out face of the Skinamarink might indicate that the monster might be the mom all along. Perhaps, after some rocky divorce or something, something terrible happened to the mother, or maybe she even brought something terrible upon herself due to drama or grief or some other third emotional drive. Then… she would try to return as something else. Why, during the look under the bed scene, would the monster pretend to be the dad and then also pretend to be the mom? It seems kind of arbitrary… unless one of those things is closer to the monster’s true self. And then when Kaylee seems to see the half-mom-half-monster thing, that could be the Skinamarink discovering the hard way that it can’t maintain its old body forever. It’s pretty powerful, but it doesn’t iterate too much beyond the design of the house, and it doesn’t seem to just do… whatever. It’s not a god, simply put.
Anyway, like everything else in these comments this is just speculation, but the Skinamarink being a parallel of an abusive divorced parent kidnapping and gaslighting kids to satisfy their own ideal version of life kind of makes sense to me.
The monster isn't called Skinamarink. It's the title of a children's song. The monster has no name. Hence Kevin asking for its name at the end of the movie and not getting a response.
@@Fluffy6555 - Fair, I was just using that as a name for convenience, because it has that Rumpelstiltskin sound to it.
@@Fluffy6555 Well what the heck do you expect us to call this thing to differentiate it from every other movie monster out there?
Besides, it seems fitting for the creature, given its strangely childlike attitude, to have the name of a children's song anyway.
@@Somerandomjingleberry you called it "the creature" and yet I knew what you were talking about thanks to context.
Bigger plot twist, as the Skinamarink is over the child at the end, a flash of red glows behind it and goes through it. The song “The only thing they fear is you” starts playing as we the audience realizes it is the Doom Slayer piercing the demon with the crucible blade and killing it. Setting free the children.
Screw my Rambo headcanon. Yours is my new favorite!
gosh I wish that was how it ended
Even bigger plot twist we find out at the end of the film that the Skinamarink is actually turns out to be Mr. Widemouth
Huh, playing doom when I read this
And on ultr nightmare at thst
Wait what? Did I watch the same movie? Istg there were bats flying into the screen and it was Morbius who saved the children
Dude, these kids are 10000 times smarter than any standard throwaway character in any horror movie I have seen (epsicially for being children)
I actually rewatched the bit in the bedroom after Kaylee closes her eyes twice, because my first time watching it I was convinced that I could see the shadow of a hanging person, but couldn't see it when I looked again
i saw exactly the sa,e thing with my broyfriend, i kinda screamed the first time, but we couldnt know what it was upon rewatching/analysing it in this video, so yea, i saw something the first time too, it was someone hanging and a head
This house became so familiar to me by the end. Many complain about similar shots. I think they are all needed. This house felt like my house by the end.
Another interesting layer to this is that the Skinamarink entity is voiced by Kyle Edward Ball, the director. So it's very meta in a sense that the "entity" is "directing" the children and "punishes" them for not doing as they are told. The "I can do anything" might also be some commentary about the power of the filmmaker or some other more meta statement. Just a thought.
You mean like Hollywood child abuse?
you know, something that i kept thinking throughout your descriptions of the skinamarink's behaviour... the more it reminded me, oddly enough, of the kind of thoughtless cruelty that children themselves can commit. kevin being in a toybox may very well be a literal depiction of the creature's thoughts towards him, that he's not a being, just a toy. even the punishments seeming irrational and reflexive would be like a kid 'sentencing' their doll to some horrible fate for 'not doing what they were told' even though the child can easily control them. the idea that this creature isn't evil, just a small child with power equivalent to a god is still utterly terrifying to me.
heck, even the parents neglect is reflective of how easy it is for a child to become a victim of another child with zero supervision, coming from someone currently in therapy for that exact scenario's trauma. adults congregate and leave all the kids alone to do whatever assuming that because they're just kids, nothing bad will happen. but it does. because kids don't understand. they can do something horrid just to get a reaction then laugh just because you screamed and that's funny because screaming is weird. they don't realize they hurt you because they don't have the context for what that kind of hurt is, yet. or worse, they did something that seemed normal to them because an adult did it to them, and they pass it on because it was modelled to them as 'acceptable' behaviour.
it's a dark topic, no doubt, and few people like to acknowledge the reality that children are capable of immense, blind cruelty. to the point where it's even been shown in studies that a startlingly large number of people are incapable of even remembering being bullies towards other children when they grow up. apologies if this only makes the movie darker for anyone reading this but it's oddly comforting as a victim of that to think maybe this movie is acknowledging the horror of being left at the whim of someone who doesn't understand you're also a person and not just something to play with just yet.
i took kevin being left in the toybox as a parallel to forgotten toys/stuffed animals
great analysis
This resonates with me. Not a lot of people talk about that kind of trauma because the idea of a child perpetrator is too uncomfortable.
Î haven't watched Skinamarink because I genuinely think I'm not mentally capable of handling the aftermathe but your video still had me consider another point of view.
What if the story was the one of toys? What if the reason why the Skinamarink is so cruel is that it is a child playing with toys? originally it plays with the whole family, adding drama by having the mom die, then playin the mom itself. What if hurting the kids when they disobey is a child breaking its toys in an attempt to fix it, or finding funny gimmicks. A lot of kids actually do tend to take off the heads of their dolls and putting it back on. What if it can tell Kevin to sleep because Kevin is made out of batteries, and Kaylee's facepaint had been erased? What if the parents got taken out because it just didn't care too much for them? The last few moments, where Kevin asks its name when it tells him to go to sleep, perhaps it was simply before his batteries were taken out?
Maybe im weird, but I love that I missed details like the toy parralels, so that I can learn it from the comments. Just reading your analysis is so chilling, and I feel is so key to understanding why the Skinamarink does what it does. I appreciate it. I still am of the more literalist camp, but I can totally see the story being an interpretive story of a kid brutally playing with their toys, told in a horror format.
That brings up a theory.
What if the monster itself is a child, and it simply just doesn't know any better?
Which might make the ending happier, Kevin screaming made it sad, and made it scared as well, notice how both kevin and the monster screamed. It didn't want to play anymore, it was actually the one that cried mommy.
I think I know what the bird feeding scene is! That scene is the crows returning with a crow that had been thought to be dead. The bird they had the funeral for, this is the bird they return with who is still alive. We see the bird feeding cartoon, indicating something thought to be dead is alive. Then we see the scene with the mother. I think the Skinamarink took the mom. That's where she's been. They thought she was dead or maybe just left but she's been with the Skinamarink. She tells Kaylee to close her eyes so she won't see the skinamarink take her away and do whatever it does.
The crow cartoon is called "The Song Of the Birds."
If you watch the Presto-Change-o cartoon, there's even more eerie similarities. The cartoon is about two dogs (the kids) fleeing a dog catcher's car, taking cover in an abandoned house only to be tormented by a magic rabbit (The Skinamarink). The Rabbit also immediately separates the two dogs by trapping them in two segments of the house. (The two liminal spaces the kids now exist in)
Honestly, I think the ending when Kevin asks, "what is your name?" twice, only for the movie to end, I think that the face at the end is actually death, coming to taken then children away from their cruel torture this being put them through. It would be very cruel if the only reason the Skinamarink showed Kevin the door was because it got bored of him and his sister and was going to let them die from their injuries, that they wouldn't be let out but die in the toy box. The Skinamarink had it's fun with the children to the point that both children have died as a result. Death is there to finally put an end to everything and allow the children to rest as they endured so much by being in the Skinamarink's toy box to the point of dying too many times, the angel of death had to step in. Still creepy and scary to me though.
The most depressing thing about this movie is that the happiest possible ending is that the children die.
I still think it’s the Skinamarink. It’s kept them, and will keep in an endless loop of torture for eternity. Yes they’ve died, but they come back to life every so often. f### that demon.
I think your analysis hits closest to home, not just in an emotionally resonant way, but makes the most sense of the interpretation of what might actually be happening. The use of the term toy box as the realm the children are trapped in makes me wonder if the entity is itself a child with no real understanding of what it's doing. It's having fun with its toys and maybe it has nothing else to do.
"The End" doesn't have to mean the end of the suffering, but rather this is the end of any hope of escape. This is all there is from now on.
I don't really know anything about this film other than it's a very evocative piece of art.
So glad I discovered this channel and can't wait to see it grow!
All of these comments scare the sh¡t out of me.
It's like depression or like the hopelessness I've felt throughout my life at my lowest.
It's downright terrifying, but I push myself into it because I'm no coward.
@@Winter-Alpha-Omega yeah, but am lol
I'm glad someone else has the same theory that the entity itself is also a child/childlike!
Haven’t thought of that before, but definitely makes you think!
I like to think that the demon is the same kid from the directors proof of concept for Skinamarink. Its called “Heck” and is up on his channel. Its about a child waking up and realizing he cant leave his home; theres no doors, the windows are blacked out, and his mom is paralyzed and unable to talk. Time is measured in “sleeps” as we see the kid trying to pass the time coloring, watching tv, trying to reach food on the shelves (in which he injures himself) as the number of sleeps grow longer and longer. His entertainment dwindles as he runs out of crayons and the tapes for the tv break. It ends with the child realizing he’s in hell.
I think the child eventually became the demon in Skinamarink, who “plays” with the kids by subjecting them to the same torture he went through
One of the scariest things to me is the lack of jumpscares; like its so visceral how so little happens for so long
As a weird insomniac kid in the 90s, i threw this on at 4am recently and it sang to my heart, the aesthetics, pacing, plot beats and narrative are sparse and brilliant
Tbh this movie really doesn't make me feel afraid more pissed off the fact kids are being tortured, and feel dread at the fact they can't do anything to stop this.
Well there's a billion skinamarinks in the world people are afraid of. It only takes one fearless to lessen the number
I feel the coma/hallucination theory is weak for a number of reasons. That fact that Kaylee also acts as a viewpoint character is especially obvious, but we also have to consider that it's heavily implied that Kevin is speaking to the monster at the very beginning and that he's then induced by it to fall down the stairs in the first place. So the monster is effectively an established presence in the film before Kevin falls.
Also, and this is just a personal opinion, elaborate death hallucinations as a plot twist are hackneyed as all get out at this point. Ambrose Bierce was doing it in the 19th century, for God's sake. I prefer to give the filmmakers more credit than that. No, I think the movie is very "does what it says on the tin" in that Kyle Ball has stated it's based on the sort of nightmare where "I was in my parents's house, my parents were missing, and there was a monster." In that sense, I don't think it's a puzzle box film meant to test your intellect and narrative detective skills as much a stark depiction of pure, unrelenting dread and doom visited on the most innocent victims imaginable. One hell of a mood, literally.
That said, subtext doesn't always have to be so damn literal. If you make a movie where a child's home becomes a twisted prison and place of torture, it's only natural that people are going to find that evocative of the real world horrors of child abuse and neglect. Those ideas can very much resonate without having to represent some secret lore backstory for the characters.
yeah. I was abused as a kid and I was so terrified of my house, it's like it took on a life of its own. I have panic attacks if I go in a house with the same architectural style now. I thought at the time it was ghosts. nope. terror of a different kind. I have always always always wanted a movie with this style and theme.
"you should be quiet" made me NAUSEOUS. so real
To be fair there can still be a lot of symbolism and subtext even in a film with very literal in universe happenings. That’s… almost every film ever, honestly.
Very well said
@@Somerandomjingleberrysymbolism and subtext /=/ “this is literally a story that is a dream happening as this child is in a coma.” The former opens up discussion and interpretation, the latter closes down conversation and is a boring interpretation as it’s been used a million times
It's more disturbing that the kids straight answer to danger is to " be quiet". Just like a bunny being hunted by a big dog, they KNOW they can't defend themselves so they run- the children lost their exit. Kids aren't dumb, so it's so sad that I'm pretty sure they knew they were defenseless and just tried to be okay
One aspect that was mentioned by another content creator was how they were never scared like adults, just shaken up and confused, because they were so small that they never really assessed the situation until further into the movie, even then…
I knew right away this movie was not for me but movies like this NEED to be made so I wanted to support the creators and bought it anyway. The amount of vision and skill required to pull a movie like this off is incredible. Children are terrible actors so their ability to edit and direct around that is magnificent.
The subject matter struck too close to home - children are hopelessly dependent on their caretakers. If their caretakers are monsters (literal or otherwise) they potentially become toys for decades. The source of tornent is also their only hope of surviving.
As a shrink who also did pediatrics the horrors Ive seen will shatter your soul. At that age children will love you unconditionally and their minds will do anything to protect you and that love. For someone to twist and abuse that is beyond monstrous.
For instance, (I can scarcely recount this without crying so bear with me.) Imagine the sweetest young girl of 6 with endless curiousity about the world around them abused in the worst ways you can possibly imagine - and then passed around to be abused by strangers with the parents consent.
She had been so warped she thought the abuse was just another form of play and sometimes you get hurt playing. She immediately walked it back because she saw it made me uncomfortable - despite all her pain she was more concerned about how her abuse was affecting ME.
The strange bit was when she was removed from that abuse she was utterly devastated to lose her caregivers. She never forgave me for that creating a mistrust of people who want to help her.
Then theres the foster system which can be just as abusive and even more traumatic so its a crapshoot.
This dependency creates a direct pipeline to the undertreated and homeless we see on the streets. Where many are endlessly cruel to them as they try to learn to be an adult from scratch.
It affects all of us in one way or another and movies like this can teach us to stretch our empathy beyond the norms.
Excellent analysis sir, much appreciated. You're helping more than you realize.
Amazing comment.
you explaining the fact the chair is the skinamarink made me feel chills in my bones. This video is fantastic good job!
Your presentation style makes it feel like I’m in class listening to an enthralling lecture-which is definitely a compliment from me, as I love a good lecture from an animated teacher!
How I describe how this movie makes me feel is getting up in the middle of the night as a kid to get a snack, turning on every light around you to scare away the darkness. And when you get your snack, you leave to your room, turning off the lights behind you. And when you get to the final light, you stare back at the darkness. You know you have to turn off the final light, but you’re afraid that something is lurking in the darkness. So you finally turn of the last light and run to your bedroom. The fear of something possibly being behind you in the dark is how this movie makes me feel. This movie never gave me a moment of relief. Even after the jumpscares, I would STILL be afraid. This movie scared the shit out of me almost to the point of tears. Me and my friend had to take a break after the knife scene.
A bit of context regarding the cartoons shown in the film:
The one with the kids floating up into a dream world is "Somewhere in Dreamland", where two poor kids in shabby clothes dream of a world of candy and ice cream, and when they wake up they discover the local merchants have provided them with food, clothes, and toys.
The one with the monster tormenting two little critter is "The Cobweb Hotel", where a married housefly couple go to a hotel run by a nasty spider who tries to ensare and eat them, but they manage to outsmart and defeat the spider.
The bird funeral cartoon is "Song of the Birds", where a little boy shoots a baby bird with a toy rifle, and the birds' family and friends mourn his death, keeping the boy awake at night with their singing. But the baby bird wakes up just before being buried and they all rejoice.
The one with the character opening a bunch of doors is from "Bimbo's Initiation", where Bimbo the dog is accosted by a cult trying to get him to join, but he refuses and ends up running through a massive house full of booby traps and cartoon physics. In the end the cult leader turns out to be Betty Boop, Bimbo joins her, and they end with a cheerful dance number.
Of course you already mentioned "Presto Chango", about a magic magician's rabbit who torments a pair of dogs, though in the end the bigger dog ends up punching the rabbit across the room and into a fishbowl.
You'll notice that these all have a similar theme about a kid or kids being tormented by some powerful force or creature, similiar to what Kevin and Kaylee are going through... but of course, notice at no point do we ever see the "happy endings" being played in the film.
The ending is ambiguous but I think what happened is Kevin took charge of the nightmare, so the nightmare couldn't scare or hurt him any more. 'Can we watch something happy?' = Kevin, the dreamer, becoming lucid and taking control. IMO I think the face at the end *is* Kevin. Or rather, the part of himself that was giving him nightmares. The skinarmarink is a stand-in for the part of everyone that creates nightmares out of our memories, anxieties, and primal fears.
I have to throw this out there, that “snake doll” had me pause it and quickly google where the movie was made because I recognized it. The “snake doll” is actually an Ogopogo! It’s a cryptid from Penticton, BC (which is the province next to the one where this was made). They sell those stuffies around the area, pretty cool to see one in such an interesting film.
If you want to overanalyze this in the replies, go for it.
The Ogopogo is also a pretty old myth about a "an evil supernatural entity with great power and ill intent." But in the case of the movie it’s probably just to show that the family has travelled around and picked it up as a souvenir.
@Spooky Circuits
I would venture to guess that it's actually a sign of foreshadowing for those who know of that cryptid and its meaning. That is no accident.
I had no idea of this cryptid, as I'm not from Canada or the Northern border states in the US, so that alone tips me off and adds new meaning!
@@thawedantarctican2171 it’s a pretty localized legend to around that area of the province so most people watching wouldn’t know about it. It’s most likely there to give the audience an idea of where it takes place.
@Spooky Circuits The filmmaker is from and still based in Canada I believe, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that the film takes place there.
Like I said before, another layer is added and think that's cool.
I KNEW IT! I'm from kelowna and a little while after seeing the movie and the doll and the copyright warning at the beginning and thinking about it, i wondered if it was the ogopogo... :3
Your analysis of this movie is the only one I've seen thus far that makes sense and actually gets the details of the movie correct. Love it!
Even the guys doing it for a while haven’t gotten it right!
Wendigoon explained it the best.
You should check wendigoo's video is also pretty good
@@happykid21garcia84 Yes, Wendigoon.
@@inversion9651 ehh, the wendigoon explanation doesn't take a lot into account (because wendigoon even says the mother is alive, and also says that Kaylee was watching TV while Kevin went to the hospital)
Wendigoon does an amazing job, but these are very two different theories
when i first saw the movie, honestly to me i thought the parents were divorced because during one part of the movie, the kids speculate on where their dad could have gone. One of them asks "do you think he's out with mom?", and Kevin saying "i don't want to talk about mom" made me think that it was a very rough divorce.
I want to watch this movie SO badly, but I know my own limits enough to recognize this movie is too intense for me. So I've been listening to analysis videos as a way to still enjoy the discussion and various analyses of this film without (for lack of a better term) traumatizing myself by ignoring my limits and actually watching the movie. Thanks for helping make this film more accessible for babies like me ❤
i feel the same way, i could not get through a movie like this 😭 good to know there’s more people who r the same :)
@@spicydeluxefor4bucks I thought I was a strong and stoic person until I heard the children's crying, especially the disturbing context of it. Nope. Screw that. I can LITERALLY FEEL like my heart is telling me "Dumbass this is too much for us. Watch something else!"
I feel exactly the same, as a mom with anxiety this is the worst thing I could ever imagine and I don't think I could handle it but as a horror fan I love watching the analysis for the story being told and how unique it is
You're not a "baby": you're very responsible, self-aware, and mature with your health and media consumption 😊 Take care! ❤
Im really surprised that this is your first video. It comes off very professional and you can see the amount of effort went into this video.
I haven’t seen the movie yet but I’m watching it with friends soon and I am really excited 😂
Wait this is his first ever video?????? Wat da heeeeell I would not have guessed that lol
Kaylee and Kevin are very close in age to me and my little brother. We both love horror. This one hit home. I love kids too, have worked with them on and off for 20 years. Childhood and fear go hand and hand. We all have half remembered fears from childhood. Vague and terrible.
Isn't it so scary how we can relate to these kinda movies? That's part of what makes it scary and it leaves a sick feeling in my stomach and I love it🤌🤌
Ps Im sorry I thought the comment read "Kaylee and Kevin are close in age to me and my brother" and I was worried u were an 8 year old watching this😂😭😂😂😭
@@Chaos_Gargoyle that is what they said lmao
@@Chaos_Gargoyle ~ We are close in age to them. Like a year and a half apart.
The concept of the chair on the ceiling being prop hunt skinamarink lives rent free in my head now, thank you. I think the concept of the cartoon of the boy feeding the birds is supposed to be a reference to Hansel and Gretel. The director mentioned that the story is like Hansel and Gretel and in that story, they break off pieces of bread to find their way only for birds and forest animals to eat them. I also think this is an apt point of the story to make such a reference because it's clear that the children have been abandoned by their parents due to forces beyond themselves. Hansel and Gretel lose their way and are led to the witch's house. In this sense, the kids are now in Skinamarink's realm and no longer in their home. I may be making too much out of the cartoon, but I believe that's what that scene is referencing.
this movie is so upsetting for me because the children are portrayed so well and accurately to how kids really act.
great movie to watch with friends
I hope the child actors weren't traumatized by the making of the movie.
i think the ending is supposed to be the entity turning to the viewer and asking your name, and that's why this is the only time we can see it. It's the viewer's version of kevin meeting the entity in the closet and talking to it when he shouldn't have.
It's showing it got bored of the kids and wants a new toy.
As a survivor of child abuse from an alcoholic, this movie resembles what a lot of my early childhood memories feel like.
This whole movie could be a metaphor for suffering severe child abuse in a broken home from a young child's perspective.
I agree with this theory the most- children of abuse are seemingly stuck in an endless loop of tumultuous and horrible abuse, but the movie’s lulling pace reveals that a child gets used to this cycle of abuse and “love”. At the end, Kevin isn’t completely terrified at the monster, just curious to know its name, just like the child of an abusive parents, they still love their parent (especially if they’re young). The skinamarink says something an abusive parent would say about Kaylee “she didn’t obey so i had to x” to set an example to the younger child. The Skinamarink sort of represents an abusive parent.
Thought of that same thing, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" as well. Except the omnipotent being's victims are two young children. Very bleak!
Yeah it's very similar. Same horror.
I think the cartoon of feeding the crows is actually about the Skinamarink playing with the kids. In the previous cartoon we see the family represented as crows.
Also, my family watched this movie and agree with you for most of it. This is my Dad's take on the end: By telling Kevin to go to sleep, it is representing the Skinamarink letting the kids die. He has gotten bored of them. Then, in a kid's voice, the Skinamarink asks us, the viewer, what is our name. In the beginning of the movie, we see Kevin playing hide and seek with whatever it is. Demons and creatures often portray themselves as a child to gain your trust. The Skinamarink is starting over with us.
I am a huge horror fan and am not easily scared. This movie had me watching through my fingers and blanket at times. It is genius in how it was shot. As a horror fan, I know the rules and certain ways movies play out, such as when to expect jump scares.
Skinamarink is filmed with every shot being one of those maybe jumpscare moments. So, it puts us on edge the entire time. I had a hard time sleeping that night.
That was exactly the ending that I got out of it, that we the viewer are next. And I didn't sleep that night.
Honestly, I wasn't that impressed or particularly frightened when I initially saw this one, but it has definitely dwelled in my mind a lot more than any movie I've seen in recent memory. Really harnessed my fear of the unknown and the claustrophobic. The terror of being trapped. Really excited to see this concept explored in the feature-length release of The Backrooms.
The backrooms? Is that an upcoming film?
@@jtarantula3390 Yes! The director released a short on youtube by the same title.
Kane pixels?
@@degenerategrappling6503yes
I much prefer a literal interpretation like yours to the “oh he was dead/in a coma all along”, because that’s just a variation on “and then he woke up and it was all a dream”
The more horrifying construction would be if this was what death is like, your conciousness in pain and suffering an endless moment in time.
How many times as children were we dragged along for errands and meetings and parties that our parents understood but we didn’t? This movie makes me feel like I’m a kid again, in the sense that I barely understand what’s happening except for some context, but now that I’m an adult, I can look back and remember oh, that was a work party or whatever. And now that I can rewatch this movie, I realize oh my god that’s what happened, etc.
Thank you, thank you for the sound effect at 24:12 - it's easy to get caught up in spook, but this actually helps ease the tension to just talk about the movie more analytically.
"i have no mouth and i must scream" but if it was written by the creepy pasta/backrooms part of internet
The little board cleaning bits of the video actually make the whole thing feel a bit more personal and like im having a conversation or im being told an interesting story as opposed to just another video essay. Excellent stuff dude!!
Aight, admittedly, I hadn't watched the movie yet before commenting. I literally just watched the movie, and that "I have No mouth and I must scream" line was CHEEKY af
Honestly, this film struck me as it could be literal or metaphorical. Your statement of it being a story about abandonment really does work in a literal or metaphorical way. Children being left by their parents due to them being stolen to another dimension, or being left by their mother and father constantly, or only ever seeing them rarely is a gut punch no matter what.
It’s almost like the protagonists’ understanding of real world cause and effect was influenced by the cartoons they watch - which would signify a lack of education, obviously perpetrated by the Skinamarik’s posessive nature. It’s called the Skinamarink because it hides behind reality-abstracting falsity (a fictional, contextless title) and “child-friendly” pretend whimsy (a nursery rhyme). Our childhood hurts because when we grow up, we gain perspective on the innocence that was ALREADY lost in the world around us before we even grew into this understanding. The children’s heads and faces are missing not just because of nostalgia and memory being the forces that erased their identities, but because they grew up in the dark, unsure of the features of human faces, let alone eachother’s. This film isn’t about childhood or a house. It’s about newborn innocence dying in a dark, suffocating nest guarded by a posessive, cold-blooded animal. A nonsensically evil, incomprehensibly powerful god - what an abuse victim might interpret their simultaneous creator and destroyer as.
With the toy box pocket dimension and killing kaylee over and over it reminded me how many times kids “kill” their toys,m. Over and over the skin is playing with them.
First off shout out to the algorithm for suggesting me this video because wow I am blown away by your analysis. I hope you can continue to make content because this video was a 10/10
Also, I had the same experience as you. When I finished watching it I was like “ok that was good” but as the time passed I kept thinking about it and as I kind of put the pieces together I realized it’s hands down a masterpiece (in my opinion) The directors ability to visually create a common shared nightmare and compose it in a scary nostalgic way is so impressive. The ambiance is what makes this movie terrifying and it really gives into the fear of the unknown (never knowing who the skinamarink is/ not knowing the time frame of it/ the darkness) also preying on the vulnerability of the kids whose first experience with fear is this and how as a viewer we are watching it unfold in their perspective is just wow.
This looks like a story me and my friends would act out with our toys and stuffies as kids, presented as a serious noir film. We would torture those toys. Haircuts, murder, diseases, marriages, divorces, magic, world domination, concerts, you name it we did it. I think Kaylee and Kevin are just toys dramatically imagined by a regular kid (the skinamarink).
Watched the movie in theatres in the front row and the jumpscares were so deafening that my ears were ringing during dinner after the movie 💀
Honestly this is the first analysis I've seen that presented the idea that the entity was forcing Kevin to watch his sister be mauled over and over, and not only that, but show Kevin the front door accompanied by heavenly music... Many have interpreted this to mean that the children have mercifully passed on and gone to heaven, but seeing as the film ends so ambiguously and still in the dark, the theory you present here is so compelling and in my opinion, adds to the tragedy and horror of the movie!! Really great video!
Also as an aside, you calling the entity "the Skinamarink" is so funny in a good way. Just imagining hearing banging upstairs and having the thought "oh my god the Skinamarink is in my attic" after watching this film lmao
I remember another horror youtuber named the Librarian explaining why he finds demons to be such powerful tools for horror. I forgot some of the points he made but one of the big things he said was that demons (unapologetic, truly malevolent entities) have this kind of sadism and cruelty that makes them inhumanly frightening. Sure humans are capable of cruelty, some are capable of great evil even, but a demon only exists to cause harm. The only thing it will ever want to do is generate more suffering. And if their target is completely helpless, all the better.
This film taps that vein of fear. Even two children aren't safe from predations like this.
The strength of surrealist horror is in that all interpretations of what the message or symbolism could be are all equally valid. It could be a coma-induced nightmare, it could be a literal reality-warping monster or it could even be the warped and symbolic representation of both an absent and incredibly abusive parent in the eyes of children too young to comprehend cruelty.
Great video.
This is quite the tour-de-force analysis. Well done, sir. When I watched Heck for the first time and then Skinamarink a few days apart, I thought, "Oh, this is my new favourite sub-genre of horror: They were doomed all along." I think that's a big part of why these two films hit so hard: the innocent child victims, and the fact that there was never any way out, the bad guy had won before the film started, and now we're just watching things slowly spiral til the end.
your method of speech and your delivery is perfect. You are a very well spoken person and that makes this whole thing a lot easier. what i notice about most small creators is their lack of confidence, something you have, confidence. it makes you seem like you are talking to us directly rather than a camera.
Well done.
It might be just me, but I got solid John Candy vibes! Awesome vid.
My interpretation is primarily coming from my minor background in psychology and trauma
But while I was watching this film, all I could think of is: Parents are divorced, mom is catatonically depressed, dad is effectively useless, and the entirety of the film is just the horrors of life (mixed with paranormal nonsense) interpreted from the lens of a child. Unfiltered and pained from lack of personal experience and no explanation from the parents.
The line that cemented it for me was mom saying, "We love you both."
At that point, dad had already left. Both literally from the scene, and physically from their lives.
The 2 different "realms" could be the different homes the kids have to be between, and the "monster" could be a monstrous step-parent creating horrific punishments or some kind of awful 3rd party. (A bit of a stretch, maybe, but its 3am leave me alone.)
Furthermore, the images of faded childrens faces could be interpreted as both a faded memory in the literal sense of the story. 572 days and all that. But as trauma festers, those memories of youth fade, become warped in your mind, and can even deeply upset.
The final and least fun point I have to make is that, I feel as though the "monster" could be some kind of allegory for molestation at a young age.
What makes me think this is when the monster tells kevin, "Don't worry, I'll pro-tect you" (directly from the subtitles), followed by banging and whimpering.
Doesn't feel good writing it, and it felt less good watching it.
This monster as interpreted as some sort of malicious guardian or step-parent, leading the kid in for... purposes, made the story make sense to me at least.
hell nah man that last part made me want to call doom slayer
last part could also explain why the skinamarink doesnt do anything when the father is there
This would make sense that this would be a representation of childhood abuse. Because memories get obscured as we age and remember the bad things over the good.
i just found this channel and honestly the way u reviewed this movie is so laid back, unique and fun it’s so awesome GRAHH. also skinamarink has been covered by quite a lot of people so it’s impressive uve managed to bring new ideas to the table
The “GRAHH” is so funny to me… like what is this ice spice’s TH-cam account watching a TH-cam horror review???? Lololol
*SPOILERS*
I saw so many theories on this movie, and it truly horrifies me to a deeper way in this movie. The different theories being as the mother had something to do with the entity, or if the way the movie is set if it's a kids mind of thinking of how it is taking abuse. I see the abuse theory, in a certain way but not 100% as the movie send this eerie mystery vibe towards me. Following up with abuse theory, I think it has occurred thinking of it as an abuse flashback from the ways windows and doors would disappear hinting in a way "There is no escape" from it.
It can also lead up to on why the entity wants to hurt them, and is pretty much toying with them throughout the movie, since they can't do anything about it.
Overall as much as I was left feeling a sence of nostalgia in a type of way with an eerie hint, I think this movie is a masterpiece for the horror industry. Something unique that catches on how children are vulnerable to pretty much anything, not knowing what is bad or not untill it's to late.
This film was recommended to me due to my love for liminal spaces and changing architecture in my horror media.
As soon as I saw the year, I knew it was going to be helluva trip for me. Kaylee and Kevin are obviously close in age due to their slight size difference. My own sister and I are only 18 months apart. In 1995, depending on the time of year, I would have been 5 or 6, and she would have been 3 or 4. So, hearing that Kevin is only 4... I immediately thought of my sister.
On top of this: I'm also the age to be the parent to these kids. As evidenced by my sister having three girls, one is 7 and the twins are also 4.
I was simultaneously in the little jammies of these two babies and also the grown up wishing to protect them.
13/10 Would recommend but also would recommend time to recover.
I see people say how " this is the scariest movie ever "
Or
" It's the most pretentious garbage there is "
But, I feel both are a injustice.
It's an art piece.
It's controversial, it crosses boundaries that have stood steadfast for literal years if not decades.
Sure it may not have been the most optimal way, perhaps some deliveries flop.
But as an art piece, I feel it's able to stand by itself without the labels except:
" just experience it.
You don't have to stay long.
Just experience it "
I'm only partway done watching this video but I just wanna say... keep it up. Seriously, this is a really interesting way to go about a 'review' or just to talk about a movie like Skinamarink. Very much enjoying your interpretations. I was a Canadian kid growing up in the late 80s-mid 90s and you had me rolling with the "baby shark" comparison, you're spot on.
Absolutely THE best review and interpretation I’ve seen. You hit on one of the points that impacted me most - we’re watching two very young children alone and helplessly vulnerable to this “entity” and it wrecks me. So horrific.
I was lucky enough to get to see this film in a small theatre in London around the beginning of February. All this time later, there's still an image of this film stuck with me.
Toward the end of the film I think (I forget where this lands in the chronology of events) one of the kids, Kevin I think, is looking around the house and turning a flashlight on and off.
At some point, it cuts to these big, crazed yellow eyes staring right at Kevin. I could almost imagine the huge unnatural smile that would've gone along with them. I had, as this happened, just leaned forward in my seat when the eyes appeared and i went so god damn cold.
The flashlight turns on and it's shown to be the eyes from the toy phone. But as far as my headcannon goes, when the torch was off those were the eyes of the real Skinamarink in whatever "true" form it had. When the torch turned on, it turned itself into a silly toy phone. Months later and still see those eyes in the dark sometimes.
This is one of the better videos I've seen about this film. Much as the style of it is worth conversation, I think the actual plot and events have been overshadowed by it a lot. Loved seeing the actual story talked about. Looking forward to more!
Damnit, that is fucking horrifying and i think you are completely right and that makes that phone much more creepy
So, part of what hit me so hard about this movie is that I grew up in a haunted house; a couple haunted houses, but the one I was in when I was little, the thing haunting my house used to say my name all the time, like i would hear different voices calling my name, and often i would hear the voices of my parents when they weren't home. And I wasnt the only one, my siblings heard stuff too. Buy like, yeah this movie sent me right back to my childhood in the worst way
YOU WHAT?!?
Yours is the first video I've watched that really helped explain why certain cartoons are playing at certain scenes (outside of the repeating magic trick). Bravo! Really helps add some layers to what's going on or may have happened before the movie's plot starts.
I love how you've Christened the demon as the "Skinamarink." ☺️
Great analysis too. Subscribed!
Great analysis! This is the first I've heard of someone correlating the door with Kevin's request for something happy. It seems so obvious in hindsight but that flew over my head completely. Well done
The skinamarink got tired of playing the sims “correctly”. It sold the windows, doors, and toilet, downloaded some mods, and took out its frustration with the sims not following its orders. We just never see the parts where the skinamarink sends them to the clown room, or recreates the Russian sleep experiment with country music.