Under the Skin

[01101010]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGDnbcq0BkU

I am not sure what to make of this teaser. It could be either really good or really wtfstupid.

[pxib]

I read the book a long time ago, and everybody is going to spoil this before you get to see it which will ruin some of the mood immediately. Suffice to say, it starts as a story about a female serial killer who picks up hunky hitchhikers in Scotland... then it's about her conversations with the sort of men the world forgets... then for a few pages it's about a murder cult.

Then it gets gloriously, majestically stranger... and ultimately it's uncomfortably preachy about a message you would be hard pressed to suspect from the description so far.

Do not seek out information about this if you possibly can. Either read the book or avoid the next trailer. The plot will be spoiled in the same way The Truman Show's was, and just as quickly. So completely that you'll find yourself wondering why the movie is bothering to hide it. Well it's because the transition of expectations is enjoyable. Try to get that experience before somebody ruins it for you.

I also think that Scarlet is woefully miscast. She's too conventionally pretty.

[Rishathra]

Fuck fuck fuck.  I was going to follow your advice pxib, but I googled the book title so I could get the author and accidentally glanced down at the wiki entry, which managed to spoil the whole thing in the first six words.

[pxib]

Here's the Amazon link. There are spoilers ON THIS PAGE.

The author is Michael Faber.

Honestly I'm lucky to work at a library where it could be recommended by one of the librarians and I could basically find it on the shelf.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You can not google this without spoiling it.  Literally the FIRST google link has a reviewer spoiling it in the fucking sub-header.

[Wasted]

That must be some awesome reveal/twist then, I'm intrigued.  I'll have to buy it while only squinting for the purchase button

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's as if a review for the sixth sense started out as "Dead psychiatrist Bruce Willis helps boy deal with his problem seeing ghosts."

[pxib]

Honestly, if you do get spoiled on that particular aspect it doesn't ruin the book the way that your spoiler for Sixth Sense takes the air out of that film. Like the main plot reveal about Sam in Moon, the book has a lot more to do with its premise once the twist is out.

[shiznitz]

*RISE*

I read the book and then watched the film. I just have one question.

Why would an A-list actress like ScarJo choose this movie to be nude? And it isn't flattering nude either.  Maybe all Hollywood actresses are not shallow, beauty obsessed people? Yeah right.

She probably wasn't paid that much since this film looks like it was made for the Scottish tax credits. She didn't need the work at the time. The book did not sell in any way to be notable. Maybe her agent had a gambling debt forgiven?

I just don't get it.

[Baldrake]

Take a look at this list, shiznitz.

See what's missing?

[schild]

This movie was never going to get her an Oscar nod. She would have a better chance getting one with a sequel to that piece of shit Vicky Christina Barcelona.

[HaemishM]

I tried to watch this but I just couldn't. I'm not too hip on tone poems and the nude scenes in the parts at the beginning were in no way enough to make me want to sit through 90 minutes of droning score, ambient noise and indecipherable Scots cuntflapping.

[Ironwood]

 

[HaemishM]

Hey, I love the Scots accent and can normally muddle through it. But in this case, I couldn't understand a goddamn word. It was like deaf mutes gargling with marbles.

[shiznitz]

Take a look at this list, shiznitz.

See what's missing?

Ok, but no one who knows anything about movies and no one who doesn't know anything about movies can believe that the script for this movie suggested anything good.  I am sticking with the theory that her agent paid off a gambling debt by signing her up for this.

[jgsugden]

Take a look at this list, shiznitz.

See what's missing?

AVN?

[Khaldun]

"I don't get it so it must be shit". Might as well be a .sig round here.

[apocrypha]

This was hard to understand, confusing, disturbing and really unusual.

I liked it a lot.

[Mattemeo]

I hadn't seen that there was a thread for this. Easily my film of 2014. Crushingly bleak, mesmerisingly powerful, a creeping intensity raised even more by the most audaciously terrifying soundtrack I've heard in years.
I have it on blu-ray but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it again yet, though the soundtrack's had a fair few outings. I knew the story beforehand having read Michel Faber's original novel a few years back, but I wasn't prepared for how singularly focussed Glazer's re-imagining of it was, it totally blew me away how much he stripped from it. I still think you could make a really good film with a more faithful adaptation but Glazer's treatment is pretty much a cult classic in the making.

[apocrypha]

Queuing the book up on my reader now then!