Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: yes, this is the movie that features Scar-Jo getting nekkid a whole lot, as she entices random men into having sex with her, but ultimately ending with her killing them. Yes, this sounds an awful lot like that trashy sci-fi thriller Species, but Under the Skin is what might have happened if someone decided to let Stanley Kubrick or David Lynch direct Species instead.
Director Jonathan Glazer has been absent from the big screen since 2004’s undervalued Birth, and his return is even further away in tone from his debut hit Sexy Beast. Building peerless atmosphere on hallucinatory, unforgettable imagery and a soundtrack that sounds like Massive Attack working from a completely twisted metronome, the first 45 minutes of Under The Skin is a five-star horror film. At times it can feel like you’ve gotten lost in a haunted post-modern museum, as everything looks and sounds and feels insidiously frightening, but you’re never entirely sure why. Glazer has us in the palm of his hand until a scene where Scar Jo gets lost in a fog, and then so too does the movie.
The second act suffers a serious dip in tension, as our ‘sextraterrestrial’ gives up prowling upon the Scottish hitchhikers, and instead goes in search of her… well, not humanity, but whatever the alien version of humanity might be called. Thankfully things take a turn for the better towards the end, as Scar Jo finds herself being preyed upon.
Glazer gets a fantastic performance out of his leading lady, who bares all physically while managing to expose very little else, able to go from pouty flirtation to terrifyingly dead-eyed in about two seconds flat. She can be an unreadable blank canvas for us to project upon our readings of the film’s subtext - alienation, isolation, the empowerment of female sexuality, the inherent dangers of anonymous sex - which actually is a lot more impressive than it sounds.
Genuinely fantastic for the first half, and certainly something that will rattle around your head for a few days afterwards. But for all the skin on show, it doesn’t get under it quite as much as it should have.
