One Terrifying Scene - Skinamarink
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00:00 What makes a movie scene scary?
00:05 A well-timed jump scare?
00:07 Disturbing imagery that makes you question what the hell you're watching?
00:10 Overwhelming tension and suspense?
00:13 The answer to this question will of course depend on who you ask, but it's that last
00:17 point, overwhelming tension and suspense, that can truly make the viewer uncomfortable
00:22 and disturbed.
00:23 Because when a movie decides to substitute a quick jump scare with prolonged tension,
00:28 it forces you to wait for the horror and let your fear grow until that tension is finally
00:33 released.
00:34 This can make for a scene that sends your anxiety through the roof, a scene that's
00:38 almost hard to look at.
00:39 It can truly make for one terrifying scene.
00:44 Skin of Meringue is a 2022 horror film directed by Kyle Edward Ball, and it's a bit polarizing.
00:50 If you want to maximize the horror of this movie, you should probably watch it alone
00:54 in a dark room at night, but even then this movie just won't work for a lot of people.
00:59 And a lot of that is because the plot is simple and pretty ambiguous.
01:04 Two little kids, Kevin and Kaylee, wake up to their dad being gone and all the doors
01:09 and windows in the house having disappeared, leaving them trapped with some sort of demon
01:13 that torments them.
01:15 Warning, this next clip is a little jarring.
01:22 We get a little more information as the movie goes on, but largely this film leaves you
01:27 with a lot of unanswered questions, and often has you wondering what's going on.
01:31 We never even see the kids' faces, but as you watch it, you'll soon realize that this
01:36 movie is not focused on plot, but rather it's simply looking to disturb you.
01:41 And similar to a movie like Sinister, I found myself disturbed by this movie's atmosphere,
01:46 which is what it's really focused on.
01:48 Skin of Mareenk is mostly long shots of different areas around a house, with white noise, distorted
01:54 voices, and creepy cartoons serving as the main sources of sound.
02:03 The shots are all at low angles and last longer than you would expect.
02:07 The characters are never fully in the frame, and the camera isn't centered, so you're
02:12 never getting a clear view of the surroundings.
02:14 This movie is also very dark.
02:16 A lot of what we see is dark rooms, dark corners, and long, dark hallways.
02:21 And if you look at darkness long enough, your imagination will start to run wild and you'll
02:26 wonder whether or not something's there, which is made much worse by the movie's use
02:30 of film grain.
02:32 All of this helps to create an unsettling atmosphere.
02:38 Now before getting into the final scene of this movie, I also want to mention that it
02:42 has very few jump scares, and it kind of subverts your expectations when it comes to the timing
02:47 of scares in horror movies.
02:49 If you've watched a decent number of horror films, when you see a shot of a dark hallway
02:53 that's on screen for 10+ seconds, you expect some kind of scare to come from the darkness.
02:59 But what if that scare never comes?
03:01 That's most of Skin of Mareenk.
03:03 There's nothing hiding under the bed or in that dark corner, and it's hard to even
03:08 find small cues of when a scare might come.
03:11 The screen will cut to black, or maybe the cartoons stop playing, or the camera moves,
03:16 which is rare, but it's no guarantee that a scare will follow.
03:20 Then when the jump scare finally does come, after you've gotten used to nothing happening,
03:25 it's shocking.
03:34 This is how the movie uses tension to unsettle you, by making you wait.
03:39 But it's the final scene, where I think all of the tension created by the movie, reaches
03:44 its climax.
03:47 The demon tells Kevin to come upstairs.
03:52 He soon finds himself walking on the ceiling into what is essentially a void, and we're
03:57 informed that the events of this movie have been going on for 572 days.
04:03 We then hear Kevin scream, as blood splatters to the floor repeatedly, alluding to a time
04:08 loop in which the monster torments Kevin over and over again.
04:17 Kevin then asks Kaylee if they can watch something happy, which is followed by a door within
04:22 a void, and a very dark room where Kevin is in bed.
04:26 The camera then slowly pans and the frame becomes filled with darkness, something that
04:31 at this point, we're very used to.
04:33 In fact, there's multiple points in the movie where the screen cuts to pure darkness.
04:38 But in those instances, nothing happened.
04:41 The movie just moved on to the next scene.
04:43 It was simply for atmosphere and tension, but this time is different.
04:48 The demon, a vague, unidentifiable face, slowly comes out from the darkness.
05:02 No big jump scare, no loud jarring sound, just a subtle blank face looking at you.
05:08 This is supposed to make you anxious, and question what exactly you're looking at.
05:12 It's the fear of the unknown.
05:14 The fact that our view of this demon is so vague and indistinct makes it scarier.
05:20 The tension builds as the face speaks to Kevin.
05:26 Kevin lays there, completely at the mercy of the demon, as if he's in some sort of
05:31 nightmare or coma, with no hope of reuniting with his sister Kaylee or finding his dad.
05:37 He innocently asks for the demon's name, but gets no response.
05:44 As the audience, we wait for a big scare to come, but it never does.
05:48 And when I first watched this movie, I actually wished that a jump scare would happen because
05:52 I thought it would be better than having to look at this face.
05:55 It would release the tension and allow me to relax.
05:59 But by refusing to go with quick scares, the movie creates and holds tension that isn't
06:04 released until it ends.
06:06 And that's how you create one terrifying scene.
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