The other day I went to see a screening of Under the Skin, a science fiction thriller dating back to the year 2013. In it a being, wearing the skin of a woman played by Scarlett Johansson, drives through the Scottish Highlands and lures men into abandoned buildings, where they sink through the floor and disappear never to be seen again.
Whilst I was mesmerised by the intense and dark imagery, others did not seem as fond of the slow pacing, the shots trenched in darkness and the very scarce exposition the movie had to offer.
Noone views a picture the same way and while I genuinely enjoyed “Under the Skin” and adored the creators devotion to darkness, others would surely disagree if I were to state that this is a movie everyone should have seen. In fact it seems most of the audience that day would have had a say against me, as I had never seen so many visitors leave a screening prematurely. Even those who stayed seemed to be rather bored than anything else by the end.
Now, I won’t get into an argument whether Under the Skin is a good movie or not, I won’t even urge you to watch it, although I have the feeling that some could appreciate its distinct nature. It seems I were to fight a losing battle if I tried to protect this movie, that has been described by some as one of the best movies of the 21th century and by others an unclear mess of half assed ideas meshed together in the most unspectacular way possible. What I will do, however, is to dive deep into the extraordinary imagery the film has to offer, especially it’s extraordinary approach to light.
There are a few aspects of filmmaking that are indifferent in every movie. In order to have an image there has to be light; for this image to move in a natural way at least 24 frames have to be shown in one second, only then the human brain interprets those individual pictures as one fluid motion; for filming motion there has to be a subject and whenever there is one we can speak of composition – the act of arranging objects or people in relation to each other within the boundaries of a frame. One could say that filmmaking is thus best described as the act of framing moving light.
And while most movies stay true to this, Under the Skin does not. Instead I would argue it frames not moving light, but darkness and thus inverts the roles of light and dark. This is not to say that Under the Skin is a nier pitch black movie all of the time. Even though many scenes take place at night, dusk or dawn there is still plenty of screen time during the day. Those scenes, however, seem to serve the same purpose scenes with scarce lighting serve in other movies. Most motion pictures we watch are quite evenly exposed, save from a few scenes where the narrative demands scary, moody or lonely imagery. This is often achieved through introducing darkness into the frame, as it highlights the exposed part of the image and thus separates the subject from its surroundings – limiting the audience’s awareness of it.
A genre where this technique is very commonly used is the horror movie. By limiting the audience’s perception of the subject’s surroundings they hide the monster and build up anticipation. Movies like Alien are gripping, not because the design of the monster is overly horrifying, but because it’s figure is rarely ever seen. Alien keeps the audience guessing what the monster really looks like, where it is and which shadow it will emerge from next. This is also why Alien is a genuinely scary movie (even though its appeal as a horror movie has somewhat waned in recent years as those tools to build up anticipation and fear have become more and more common in contemporary horror movies), and Camerons follow up Aliens is not. Cameron decided to diverge from the original material and show not one but hundreds of aliens. He defined their dimensions and bodily proportions and showed them in bright light. The climax of the movie takes place in a relatively well lit room, while Alien’s finale is so dark the creature itself is not even seen for the majority of it. In fact there is nearly no real blackness in Aliens . Oftentimes the images are tinted in a dark red or blue hue to convey darkness, but still show all the action.
But Under the Skin goes further than even Alien. Even though most of the science fiction horror movies scenes are very poorly lit, light is still used to convey safety and comfort. This comes to show that the roles of light and darkness are not inverted in this movie. And why should they be? After all this is a feature about the crew of a spaceship terrorised by an alien. It would be nonsensical to invert the roles of light and dark here, as we – the audience – are commonly less scared of well lit areas, than dark ones. The filmmakers can use this to make us feel the same way the characters do in the movie. If a scene is dark we get scared, just like the crew of the Nostromo does, and when there is light we see it as a cue that a safespace has been reached, where monsters can’t enter as easily. Of course many filmmakers exploit this to subvert the audiences expectations and shock them even more -the chestburster scene could be seen as an example – but this only works if the corresponding feelings towards light and dark have been set up first. What, however, would happen if we were not to follow the humans , but the aliens perspective.
This is the question Under the Skin set out to answer. The audience does not expect something to emerge from the blackness of the screen. There are no jump scares. No, Under the Skin is not your typical horror movie. I would argue it isn’t even scary. A reason for this could be, that the audience follows the perspective not of the prey, but the predator. The lack of light is soothing to the character, and functions as an extension of her. There is one shot at the beginning of the movie that shows this quite well.
Scarlet Johanson enters a shopping mall. There are bright lights everywhere, people are running around. We see the reality of the world this movie takes place in for the first time. This is not a world, that’s always trenched in darkness, it is our world, it’s reality. The very clear digital look of the movie and its documentary like b-roll helps to put forth this point even more. This is one of the brightest scenes up to this point of the story, and the first time the main character is seen among other people. But while the world around her is illuminated by fluorescent bulbs, she herself remains a silhouette at first, only later entering the world – foreshadowing, that there is something not quite normal about this woman. It’s not only her hiding in the shadows, it’s also the shadows following her. Later there are scenes where it is unclear where Scarlett Johansson’s hair begins and the darkness around her ends. The figure melts into the darkness, becomes one with it. This is what makes Under the Skin special. Darkness is not used as a trope, not even as an extension to a character, it has become the protagonist. And we are seeing the world from its perspective, but are we scared of this creature the narrative follows? Are we engrossed, do we resent her? No, not really. We are witnessing the narrative from the perspective of the predator, does this not mean that we in turn become the predators? Is the darkness not soothing to us as well and don’t we get scared by light rather than by blackness?
Heavy spoilers ahead, if you have not watched the movie don’t read on. Go watch it and then return! 🙂
Under the Skin undergoes a dramatic change during its runtime. While the narrative initially follows a completely emotionless killing machine, we witness this creature slowly changing and evolving a sense of self. In this essay I will not get so much into the meaning of the movie, and focus more on its cinematography. Those who expect an explanation, who want to know who the riders are and what is even happening in the film, I have to disappoint. I understand it as little as you do. But while it is certainly entertaining to think of theories, an actual explanation is really not needed to get the movie’s message. In my opinion Under the Skin is about the predatory role of men in society.
It is quite unusual to find a movie where a female protagonist has a sexually loaded predatory role specifically aimed at men. This role, however, changes when the turning point of the narrative is reached. The second half of the movie is not only lit brighter, it also shows Johansson’s character growing more and more uneasy with her role. Eventually she tries to break out of her routine and flees to the countryside. From this point forward the roles of light and dark in the movie have yet again changed, as the alien has grown afraid of the dark.
The movie reaches its climax when the pre established roles eventually flip entirely. A man tries to rape the alien in a dark forrest and the skin she has been wearing the entire time is pealed off. The rapist flees in terror, only to return and put an end to the life of this being by burning it to death. The closing shot shows a white sky with flakes of snow slowly falling to the ground. When the creature under the skin is finally revealed it comes to no surprise that it embodies the exact darkness it has become so afraid of. Not only is it featureless, its skin is also of an otherworldly blackness, just as dark as the shadows it used to inhabitat. Eventually the predator has been slain by the very prey it was created to hunt. But it’s not a feeling of relief to see the monster burn. Throughout the movie we have learned to see the world from her perspective, we have watched men on the street, witnessed her luring them in, but we have also seen her questioning that role. We have seen a monster become human. Something very rare: The Monster’s Arc. But now the former prey turns out to be the true predator. And thus a movie, which starts off as a mildly scary thriller, becomes a critique of society and a world, where darkness does not beg the same dangers for males and females.