UNDER THE SKIN: Five Years Later

Why Jonathan Glazer's beautifully haunting portrait of an extraterrestrial still remains a must-see half a decade after its initial release.

By: Josh McCormack

Every once in a while, I see a movie that changes me. A movie where there is a clear difference between my outlook on cinema both before and after I saw it. A movie that completely takes hold of me and no matter how many other films I watch, I can't escape its grasp.

I remember seeing John Carpenter's Halloween in a revival theater at the age of 12 and it was a defining experience. Since then, movies like The Godfather, The Thing, Taxi Driver, Pan's Labyrinth, Moonlight and even Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird have led to a similar sort of pseudo-spiritual awakening about what film has the potential to be.  

Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin is also one of these movies. 

Released in the U.S. in 2014, Under the Skin was strangely on my radar in a time when I wasn't really into arthouse films. Perhaps it was a glimpse of the gorgeous Neil Kellerhouse poster at some local multiplex, a snippet I heard of Mica Levi's ethereal score, or maybe just the fact that I, like most other teenagers who watched MARVEL movies, had a crush on Scarlett Johansson. 

Whatever the reason, Under the Skin was a film I had privately been anticipating for a few months, so once I was able to watch it via on-demand I did so immediately. It blew my sixteen year old brain out the fucking window. 

With Under the Skin it was like I was seeing a culmination of all the things I loved put together in one artistic package of a film. One part arthouse version of Species and one part more depressing version of Starman, UTS is a film built off ideas of body horror, forbidden sexuality and the underlying cruelty of man.

 It was a movie that spoke to my young adult mentality of distrust in society, the way men use and abuse women, and even how all of our daily acts of kindness or hatred have a profound effect on another.

While I myself am completely over film scholars and writers saying that such and such movie is about the "human experience", I actually believe it's a pretty spot-on statement when talking about Under the Skin.

Or perhaps a better way to put it is that it's about humanity in general. Scarlett Johansson's lead alien, disguised as a woman (named only "The Female" in the film's final credits) starts the film as a hunter, preying on men by luring them into her hideout using her beauty. Once she has them, she processes their organs, killing them, and finding more victims for her species. As she goes about her stalking throughout the early sequences in the film, she is introduced to more and more aspects of human life. 

She trips in a crowded marketplace, she is helped back up by strangers. She receives flowers from a man in traffic as a gesture of kindness and a display of the man's affection. She cuts herself on said roses and experiences what it is like to bleed as a human. 

Eventually, after luring a man who is facially disfigured to his death with the promise of spending the night with him, she begins to feel regret. It is at this moment, she frees the man and escapes with one of her fellow extraterrestrials pursuing her. 

From this point on, the film becomes a story of an alien trying to fit in and understand humanity. She meets up with a man who takes care of her when he finds out she has nowhere to go. He teaches her how to laugh, how to dance, and eventually how to love. When their attempt at love-making shocks her, however, she leaves. 

In the woods she is found by a strange man, who attempts to take advantage of her, leading to an incredibly tense "cat and mouse" climax. The hunter has now become the hunted.

I won't give away the ending for those who haven't seen it, but it's brutal and dour. Yet it's the perfect ending to this sci-fi masterwork. 

By the films conclusion, "The Female" has learned everything about human beings. Their love, their kindness, and their ability to destroy that which they don't understand.

This deep, yet incredibly quiet story is accented by a wide array of technical prowess behind the scenes.

Jonathan Glazer's decisions to shoot many of the early stalking sequences throughout Scotland using hidden cameras is genius. It leads to some wonderfully awkward and strange interactions that you just can't plan with a script. The fact that their is still no clear distinction between the paid actors and the real people just makes it all the more convincing.

Glazer, along with cinematographer Daniel Landin, also provide some gorgeous imagery. The landscape shots of the mountains in Scotland are filled with wispy clouds and fog forming in exotic ways across the skyline, making Earth seem even more alien to the lead character. The reflective black interior of the enigmatic alien space craft is also incredible and probably serves as this film's single most iconic image (Stranger Things ripped it off for god's sake!). The sequence in which one of our male victims is stuck in some sort of otherworldly ether and is forced to watch another person within get completely torn apart is one of the most haunting images I've ever witnessed in a film. 

The score provided by Mica Levi also ranks high amongst some of my all-time favorite movie soundtracks. Using a soundscape of ethereal electronic noises fused with strings, it provides a haunting background that shifts and warps tonally with the lead character's own progression.

The unsung hero of Under the Skin, however, is that of Scarlett Johansson. Her performance is fantastic and it is far more than just her making a blank face at the unknown human behavior around her. She's able to convincingly display affection and immediately shut it off like a defense tactic throughout the opening moments of the film. And yet her transition into becoming more human is one that is subtle and displayed wonderfully by Johansson in a performance with very few words. It's her best performance to date. 

Under the Skin is a slow-burn for sure, but it's a fascinating sci-fi/horror drama that only gets better the more I watch it. It's not only my favorite genre movie of the past decade, it's my favorite film of the past ten years as well.