Under the Skin Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Under the Skin Blu-ray Movie Review

The eyes have it.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 10, 2014

Under the Skin rests on one unavoidable conceit: most guys would happily get in a car driven by Scarlett Johansson if she asked them to (maybe even if she didn’t). All joking aside, the point is that this film’s somewhat opaque plot takes an actress of Johansson’s easy allure and strangely exotic qualities, aspects that seem both accessible and, well, alien at exactly the same time, to make its story of a visitor from outer space harvesting— well, something—at least marginally believable. Johansson plays an outer space Circe of sorts, a blue-skinned alien who “wears” a human epidermis (shades of Ed Gein) and is seemingly irresistible to a slew of human males whom she lures to their deaths in an oily pool that seems to eat them from within, leaving only their skins as a haunting reminder of what once was. Under the Skin was culled from a novel by Michael Faber, a piece which kind of like the victims in the film wallowed in something black—in this case, comedy. Faber’s book was a much more direct and at least relatively comprehensible tome detailing the exploits of a female extraterrestrial who took unsuspecting male hitchhikers back to her home planet, where they were fattened up for the slaughter in a sly take on the same premise that informed the iconic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” (itself based on a preexisting short story). A lot of Faber’s story has been jettisoned for this film version, but his central gambit of presenting the tale through the alien’s point of view is sustained here, in a kind of distaff riff on a similar perspective detailed in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. That film is a model of narrative clarity when compared to Under the Skin, however. Director and co-writer Jonathan Glazer presents the story as a series of vignettes, with next to no dialogue helping to explicate what’s going on. Instead, the viewer is left to infer several aspects of the tale, including what exactly it is that the Johansson character (who is never named in the film, unlike in the book) is actually up to.

Under the Skin has been the cause of some controversy and debate since its release, and one can’t help but think back to similar befuddlement and discussion when Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey first appeared. The comparison is apt in more ways than simply reactions to the film, however, for Glazer, like Kubrick, takes a detached, observational tack with the film, dissociating himself from much if any emotional content. Also like 2001, there’s a none too subtle emphasis on vision and seeing, obviously referring overtly to an observational standpoint. In Kubrick’s film, everything from HAL’s glowing red orb to Dave’s eyes taking in the psychedelic wonders in the film’s climax makes this point. In Under the Skin, Glazer repeatedly gives us close-ups of Johannson’s eye, including in the opening sequence where a montage of sorts segues from a starburst to some kind of alien craft in space to, finally, an eye itself. The obvious allusion here is that we’re being watched, and, in the parlance of the film, we in fact are the watcher.

Other parts of the film play out like a “Bizarro world” rendition of 2001. Instead of sleek, sterile white that is such a part of the Kubrick film’s production design, here things are bathed in an equally pristine black, to the point that repeatedly throughout the film Johansson or some other character seems to almost materialize whole out of an all encompassing darkness. (There is one notable sequence surrounded by a blinding white, shown in screenshot 2, that echoes Kubrick's design aesthetic.) But as much as Arthur C. Clarke’s story of evolution threw critics and filmgoers for a loop back in the late sixties, the actual story of 2001 was surprisingly straightforward, although perhaps obfuscated by a laconic style which, like Under the Skin, eschewed dialogue and other traditional narrative tropes in favor of pure imagery. Under the Skin merely alludes to a story much of the time, forcing the viewer, in true Heisenbergian fashion, to help make it up—as an (maybe the) observer.

The film’s minimalist (almost abstract) plot simply follows Johannson as she tools about Scotland in a cargo van, chatting up various locals (actual nonprofessionals who were caught courtesy of multiple GoPro type units installed throughout the vehicle) and, ultimately, getting at least a few of them back to a squalid little flat which, science fiction style, houses an opaque black pool of liquid which sucks the guys down like quicksand. In one of the film’s most chilling moments, the point of view suddenly—and inexplicably—changes from the Johansson character to one of her victims, suspended in the viscous liquid, looking up at his predator, until he spies another previous victim floating next to him, a guy who is in the last throes of whatever metamorphosis the liquid engenders.

Quite a bit of Under the Skin is intentionally repetitive and dreamlike. In fact, in another odd but visceral sequence, the alien picks up a badly disfigured guy (who suffers from what looks like Elephant Man syndrome) and takes him back to her flat, where he repeatedly asks her if he’s dreaming. In just one of the film’s oblique developments, the guy actually evades the alien’s “plans” for him, only to run smack dab into the film’s other recurring character, a mysterious guy who zooms through the Scottish highlands on a high speed motorcycle, evidently acting as a clean up crew for any mistakes.

There’s little doubt that Under the Skin is an incredibly unique film experience, but its intentional obscurity frankly doesn’t seem to hide much in the way of depth or nuance, and in fact seems to be simply a deliberate style choice more than anything. Why, for example, does the alien injure or kill a man she encounters on a rock strewn Scottish beach? What’s with the gaggle of girls dragging the alien into a strobe light infested dance club? Do they think she’s the woman the alien has “become” by wearing that skin? And what exactly is the goal of the alien and the motorcycle rider? In fact, what are these two trying to accomplish? Does the conflagration that caps the film augur an end to this "mission", or is it simply going to begin again, as hinted at by the film's opening scenes? These are all central questions whose answers might at least help to make sense of the narrative, but based on an admittedly non-scientific survey of various responses to the film, there does not seem to be even a smattering of agreement on what these—or indeed many other—elements in Under the Skin actually mean. Like the alien herself, we're left to simply observe, perhaps comprehending little if anything.

Under the Skin Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Under the Skin is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. If one keeps the different cameras utilized in mind while watching this, as well as deliberate contrast and lighting issues Glazer and his DP Daniel Landin use, this Blu-ray offers a very accurate looking recreation of the original film experience. While most of the "standard" scenes were shot digitally with the Arri Alexa Plus, large swaths of the kind of verité elements were done with a battery of GoPro like units manufactured by One of Us One-Cam, as documented quite nicely on the included featurette about this system. The One-Cam footage is slightly though noticeably softer and just as slightly less cinematic looking than the Arri Alexa sequences. Contrast has been boosted at times (see screenshot 2), leading to some blooming in lighter gradients. Conversely, a lot (as in a lot) of this film is shrouded in near blackness, to the point that only brief snippets of objects or characters can be seen. The good news in this regard is that black levels are incredibly deep and solid. Colors, aside from pops like Johansson's lipstick, are fairly muted throughout the film, an obvious intentional choice. Though there are key sequences cast in blue (underwater) and red (a skin harvesting sequence), fine detail is only minimally affected. The only real artifacts of note are some minor banding in the repeated starburst effect and minor compression artifacts in some of the darkest scenes.

Under the Skin Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Under the Skin's sound design is on the minimalist side itself, and so the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix tends to spring into the most life and surround activity in scenes where, for example, the high speed motorcycle races across slick Scottish lanes or the scene where Johansson visits a nightclub. The scene at the beach has some great, immersive ocean noises spilling through the side and rear channels, as does Mica Levi's brooding score. There's next to no dialogue in the film, but what is here is presented very cleanly, albeit frequently with heavy Scottish brogues (included subtitles make it a bit easier to decipher what some of the characters are saying).

Under the Skin Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Featurettes (1080p; 42:23) offer ten brief pieces that are variably interesting. Some, like the Camera and VFX featurettes, are quite informative and very interesting. Others, like the Casting item, are mere puff pieces. The featurettes include:

  Camera

  Casting

  Editing

  Locations

  Music

  Poster Design

  Production Design

  Script

  Sound

  VFX

Under the Skin Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm sure there will be no dearth of people insisting I've completely missed the point and am woefully inadequate to ruminate on the inherent eloquence of Under the Skin (to those people I respectfully say, get in line, please). But I've seen the film three times now, and it simply does not permit the relatively facile exegesis that even Kubrick's monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey did (at least, once people actually started to think about it). Under the Skin has some absolutely arresting elements, but they're frequently overshadowed by a kind of all encompassing question of Why is this happening? Nevertheless, this is the same sort of one of a kind experience that, say, Upstream Color is (though for me personally, Upstream Color is, like The Man Who Fell to Earth, a model of narrative clarity when compared to Under the Skin), and for that reason, movie lovers in search of something "totally different" will no doubt want to watch this, even if they end up not understanding much of what they've seen. This release would have benefited immensely from an informative commentary track, but otherwise technical merits and supplements are generally very strong. Recommended.