Under the Skin is the one film well outside your comfort zone that you should see this year. You’ll overhear your suite mate’s film major friend talking about “the amazing new Scarlett Johansson movie” and you’ll be interested, but then you’ll read the Wikipedia summary and be frightened. Don’t be. Under the Skin is well worth your time, despite an occasionally slow plot and a largely confusing premise.
TheconfusingpremiseisthethingontheWikipediapagethatwillscareyouatfirst.Here’sthe deal: Scarlett Johansson plays (in an amazing performance) an extraterrestrial collecting male earthlings. It’s unclear exactly why, but it seems to have something to do with their innards. She sucks her victims’ insides out through some mechanism that’s one half alien prison torture, one half surrealist hell-scape.
The story revolves around Johansson’s nameless character, who disguises herself as a human femme fatale and stalks her prey in scenic northern Scotland. As the film goes on, however, she makes the mistake of developing a powerful sympathy for her prey. She begins to learn our ways and tries to understand how we interact with the world. The result is a surprisingly astute meditation on what it means to be human. Director Jonathan Glazer succeeds in showing us what our lives look like through Johansson’s alien eyes.
