Film Theory: The SCARIEST Movie You’ve Never Seen! (Skinamarink)
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00:00 [Music]
00:08 Come upstairs.
00:10 [Music]
00:17 Come upstairs.
00:19 [Music]
00:24 You will do what you are told.
00:27 [Scream]
00:29 [Music]
00:37 Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory!
00:39 The show that promises to let you sit and watch public domain cartoons for as long as you want,
00:44 provided you stab that subscribe button right in the eye.
00:47 Now, I'm not a man with a whole lot of free time.
00:49 Between launching new channels,
00:51 (Subscribe to Style Theory by the way)
00:53 writing and rewriting FNAF timelines,
00:55 being a father and, you know, just trying to have an actual life,
00:59 things can get pretty darn busy.
01:00 But in what little free time I've had lately,
01:02 I've been scrolling through the TikToks to see what's hip with the kiddos.
01:06 And what I've seen has been nothing but pages and pages of Pedro Pascal fancams.
01:11 Do not make fancams of school staff.
01:14 Oh, you can't stop me, Pedro. I can, and I will.
01:17 [Music]
01:26 But once I scrolled past those,
01:28 I was inundated by something far less aesthetic and much more scary.
01:32 A terrifying new horror movie called Skinnerink.
01:34 Everything I saw heralded this thing as the scariest movie ever.
01:38 Because some people are saying this is literally the most disturbing thing they've ever seen.
01:42 And after watching it, yes.
01:44 And based on the trailer alone, I was hooked.
01:46 In this house, in this house, in this house.
01:49 In this house.
01:53 Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached peak analog horror.
01:56 So, intrigued and a little bit scared, I did what any normal person would do.
02:00 I sat down at 9am on a Wednesday morning with two of my employees to watch through this puppy.
02:05 And boy, was it controversial.
02:07 One of them rated it an 8.
02:08 The other rated it a 0 and said it didn't even deserve to be called a movie.
02:13 And honestly, I can't really blame him for his opinion.
02:15 Five minutes in, and it's immediately clear why this thing is going to be a divisive movie.
02:19 It's about 100 minutes of staring at dark walls and grainy hallways while people whisper in the background.
02:25 It is not for everyone.
02:27 As for my opinion, I can tell you that it was probably the most active movie watching experience that I've ever had.
02:32 With my eyes constantly scanning the frame,
02:34 questioning whether what I was seeing was a shadow monster or just artifacting of the camera.
02:38 I wasn't just passively watching a movie, I was having to solve each and every frame.
02:42 Trying to understand what exactly I was looking at.
02:45 TLDR, it worked for me. I really enjoyed it.
02:48 But not only is Skinny Meringue a visually challenging movie, it also is a narratively challenging one.
02:53 The story, as it's presented to us, is about two young children, Kaylee and Kevin,
02:57 who wake up in the middle of the night to find that their parents have disappeared along with all the house's doors and windows.
03:02 And so the kids in the movie respond like any normal child would do in this sort of situation.
03:06 They park themselves right in front of that TV and start binge watching some old school copyright neutral cartoons.
03:12 Pretty soon though, things get worse as they begin to realize that they're not alone.
03:16 Inside the house is a formless demon who makes the kids do horrific things like...
03:21 walk up the stairs and...
03:23 walk up the stairs again.
03:25 He is a very cardiovascular ghost.
03:27 Oh yeah, also put a knife in your eye.
03:29 We don't actually see anything, but the sudden switch to implied violence is just incredibly jarring.
03:36 Bit by bit, things get progressively worse for our young duo.
03:39 Toys begin sticking to the ceiling, night lights get unplugged, the toilets disappear.
03:43 Man, this demon is ruthless.
03:45 The eye thing, yeah, that was brutal, but making them poop in buckets? That's just cruel.
03:49 Eventually, Kaylee disappears, leaving the four-year-old Kevin alone in a house that has literally and figuratively turned upside down.
03:56 As the movie ends, we see this image stating 572 days,
04:00 which is super random because up to this point there really hasn't been any clear focus on the passage of time.
04:05 And then you have this brutally long pull-out shot that lasts almost two consecutive minutes,
04:09 just reeeaaally milking it for that watch time, aren't they?
04:13 On an unrelated note, did I mention the director for this thing got a start on YouTube?
04:17 I see you. I know what you're doing.
04:19 I know your secrets.
04:20 There's a bit more screaming and whispering and blood before the movie ultimately ends with a blurry figure fading into frame telling Kevin to...
04:26 [Kevin whispers]
04:28 And, uh, that's about it.
04:29 Clear as crystal, right?
04:30 Well, yeah, actually, kinda.
04:31 On the surface, it seems like just another spooooooky ghost movie,
04:35 but looking at it that way actually leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
04:38 What was the monster?
04:39 Why did everything disappear?
04:40 Where did the parents go?
04:42 What is the significance of 572 days, and what does that ending actually mean?
04:46 In short, this movie is an open invite for theorists to solve.
04:50 And you know what? I think I cracked it.
04:51 What seems like a simple ghost story is actually a tragedy,
04:54 a terribly sad story about loss, grief, and family trauma,
04:57 all told from the perspective of a four-year-old child.
05:00 Everything we see in the film feels like a paranormal situation, right?
05:03 We hear voices, we see things stuck to the ceiling,
05:05 we have doors disappearing, and we have this constant grain and distortion.
05:09 What could cause all of this, if not a demon?
05:12 Well, let's just start from the very beginning.
05:13 The movie kicks off with a seemingly random event
05:16 where Kevin falls down some stairs in the middle of the night.
05:18 We see a series of clips of Kevin stealing blankets from his closet,
05:21 sitting up on top of the stairs,
05:23 and then we get an upside-down shot of the bottom of the stairs
05:25 after hearing a loud thud.
05:27 This is then followed up by his dad on the phone.
05:29 "He was falling, but Kevin fell down the stairs and hit his head."
05:33 Seems pretty cut and dry.
05:34 Kevin falls down some stairs and hits his head.
05:36 There's just one problem with that.
05:38 This incident is never mentioned again.
05:40 It is completely arbitrary for everything that comes afterwards.
05:43 It goes nowhere and nothing comes of it.
05:45 Why would the director be showing us this, then?
05:47 Why is it the first event of the movie?
05:49 Well, I suspect it's because this is the real incident
05:52 that incites everything we see happen afterward.
05:55 The fall sends Kevin into a coma,
05:57 and everything we see from that point onward in the movie
05:59 are the real-world events being filtered and processed
06:02 through his unconscious condition.
06:04 Now, let me immediately say that I know how lame coma theories are.
06:07 You can make anything fit into a coma or dream theory
06:10 because there's no logic in these things.
06:12 Anything can be bent to be a piece of evidence.
06:14 There is a reason that across the 1,012 theories
06:17 that I've written across the last decade,
06:19 only one of them has claimed that everything was a dream.
06:22 And that's because I only pull them out when I think that that's the author's true intent.
06:26 And with Skinner Meringue, I am convinced that this is the right interpretation.
06:29 Obviously, we just talked about the inciting incident of a head injury,
06:32 but there is so, so much more here.
06:35 Across the entirety of the movie, there are three random details
06:38 of this supposed haunting that stood out to me as unusual.
06:40 The missing toilets, the request to stick a knife in Kevin's eye,
06:43 and the marker of 572 days.
06:46 So, let's just go back and tackle these one at a time.
06:48 First, let's just take a look at the basic concept of the film itself.
06:51 While the idea of doors and windows disappearing from a house
06:53 makes for a creepy paranormal setup,
06:55 what doesn't fit quite as well is the disappearance of the toilets.
06:59 The lack of doors and windows I totally get.
07:01 You're trapped inside of a situation that you can't escape from.
07:03 You're at the mercy of the demon.
07:05 But the toilets?
07:06 I mean, why would a paranormal entity do that?
07:08 It's either a big troll, or this isn't actually a ghost that we're dealing with.
07:13 So, let's just assume that everything after Kevin falls down the stairs
07:16 and hits his head takes place in a hospital.
07:18 Well, if that's truly the case, then the disappearing toilets
07:20 would be the reality of his current situation.
07:23 He's no longer physically going to the bathroom and toilets anymore.
07:27 Depending on the policy of the hospital he's in,
07:29 he's likely using a bedpan, diapers, or a rectal catheter to excrete his waste.
07:33 This would also explain the disappearing doors and windows
07:35 that form the core of this movie's plot.
07:37 On one hand, it's symbolic of Kevin now being trapped inside his own mind with no escape.
07:42 That's why, near the end of the movie, when he asks to watch something happy,
07:45 we see visions of a door.
07:47 It's a moment or a chance of escape.
07:49 But the disappearing doors and windows could also literally be the hospital room around him.
07:53 A claustrophobic space that's blocked off by curtains.
07:56 In fact, look closer at your typical hospital room and what do you see in each one?
08:00 A TV, sitting in front of the patient, playing all day, every day.
08:03 And what do we see in Skinner Meringue?
08:05 A TV as a constant presence throughout everything in the film.
08:08 So much of this movie is spent sitting in front of a TV,
08:11 specifically public domain cartoons.
08:13 It's gotta mean something, right?
08:15 It does.
08:16 These cartoons are the entire plot of the movie.
08:19 If you take a closer look at the cartoons that play and when they play,
08:22 they seem to be telling us the real story of what's happening in the movie.
08:25 One of the first cartoons we see after Kevin's accident is this.
08:28 A baby bird being shot out of the sky and appearing dead.
08:31 This cartoon is the Song of the Birds from 1935.
08:34 Except there's a twist here if you watch beyond what they show in Skinner Meringue.
08:37 When the birds go to bury the baby's body, he wakes up and everyone celebrates.
08:41 This cartoon, I suspect, is representative of Kevin's injury.
08:44 He's the baby bird who was knocked unconscious.
08:47 This clip even plays after the kids ask the question,
08:49 "Why am I crying?"
08:51 It's because mom thinks that her baby bird is dead.
08:54 Or maybe just close to death.
08:55 The second major cartoon we see is the Cobweb Hotel from 1936,
08:59 where two newlywed flies watch helplessly as a young fly is trapped inside a monstrous spider's bed of webs.
09:05 They then have to fight to escape from the spider.
09:07 Now, this could very easily be symbolic of Kevin and Kaylee fighting against a monster that has them trapped inside the house,
09:12 but it could also be Kevin's parents,
09:14 forced to watch their son trapped inside of a hospital bed, unable to escape.
09:19 Considering that the two newlywed flies are adults, I suspect it's the second explanation.
09:23 The third major cartoon reference we get is to 1931's Bimbo's Initiation.
09:27 This one we don't actually see, but I was able to recognize the audio from research we did years ago
09:31 when we did our Bendy and the Ink Machine episode about rubber hose animation.
09:35 [Bendy and the Ink Machine music]
09:39 In this one, Bimbo falls down a sewer, only to be locked in a prison of inescapable false doors,
09:44 all while the world turns upside down around him.
09:47 Huh! A character falls down, winds up trapped in a place without doors, and everything turns upside down.
09:52 Why even have a movie, Skinner Meringue? You told us everything we needed to know right there.
09:56 And in the final cartoon, 1939's Presto Change-O, we see this clip of a dog that's being shot in the eye.
10:02 Again, sound familiar?
10:04 [dog being shot in the eye]
10:06 The cartoons are telling the story of Kevin's life, and why are they always on?
10:09 Why are they always playing? Because he's sitting in a hospital room, stuck in front of a TV.
10:14 But with all that said, let's look a bit closer at the eye bit.
10:16 It's one of the very few moments of implied violence in the movie,
10:19 so obviously it's gonna stand out as important, but again, why?
10:22 Why this, of all things? Just to shock us?
10:25 Again, I don't think so.
10:27 Let's take a look back at what caused Kevin to fall down the stairs in the first place.
10:30 [Kevin's voice]
10:32 Kaylee says he was sleepwalking. Huh.
10:35 Sleepwalking, hallucinations, eye pain.
10:37 It doesn't take Derek Shepard to know what's going on with this one.
10:40 Kevin has a brain tumor.
10:42 And yeah, that was a Grey's Anatomy reference for any of you under the age of 45.
10:46 I suspect Kevin was suffering from a tumor on the frontal lobe of his brain,
10:50 thereby causing him to sleepwalk, hallucinate, and ultimately fall down the stairs.
10:54 In fact, brain tumors are the most common form of solid tumor inside of children,
10:58 affecting about 5,000 in the US every year.
11:01 What I suspect happened here was that the brain tumor caused his sleepwalking and subsequent fall.
11:05 And while the fall itself might have resulted in a minor injury,
11:08 considering what we hear from Dad's phone call,
11:10 the subsequent hospital visit or the damage that the fall caused made the tumor issue worse,
11:14 with Kevin ultimately winding up in a coma shortly thereafter.
11:17 So what does all of that have to do with knives and eyes?
11:20 Well, I don't think that it was just any knife we're talking about here.
11:23 I think what's going on is a surgical procedure.
11:26 One way to remove tumors from the frontal lobe of the brain is to perform a procedure
11:29 known as a supraorbital keyhole craniotomy,
11:32 a type of brain surgery where they go in through, you guessed it, the eye.
11:36 It's minimally invasive, and it's an easier way to reach the frontal lobe to remove the tumor,
11:40 which is why Kevin feels like he's being stabbed in the eye with a knife.
11:43 This would also explain another weird detail that we see towards the end of the film.
11:47 At the top of the movie, we get a montage of various family photos hanging on the wall.
11:50 At the end, we get a similar montage, but this time,
11:53 everyone is missing their head or the faces have been weirdly distorted.
11:56 This would be the result of a condition known as prosopagnosia,
11:59 also known as face blindness, where you cannot recognize people's faces.
12:03 It's a symptom that often appears in patients with brain tumors.
12:07 This leads us, then, to the ending of the film,
12:09 where we see blood being sprayed on the floor over and over,
12:12 all while we hear screaming in the background
12:14 and the repeating music from the Presto Change-O cartoon,
12:17 the one where the dog gets shot in the eye.
12:19 If you turn on the closed captions, the first round of screaming we hear is captioned as "Child Crying."
12:23 Thank you closed caption people for not naming him the crying child.
12:26 I just can't rewrite the damn FNAF timeline again.
12:29 The next round of screaming, though, is credited as "Older Child Cries."
12:33 This scene, I suspect, is Kevin being operated on over and over over a prolonged period.
12:38 That's why the blood spills on the carpet repeatedly,
12:41 why the music is pulled from the cartoon that references his eye pain,
12:44 and why the subtitles differentiate "child" and "older child."
12:47 It is two years of Kevin in a coma, undergoing procedures like this,
12:51 as doctors try and repeatedly fail at removing the tumor that's endangering his life.
12:55 How do I know it's been two years?
12:57 The 572 days marker that we see in the film's final act.
13:01 At no point in the movie is there ever any sort of emphasis on the passage of time,
13:05 and yet, for some reason, the film decides to call out this little fact as important.
13:08 I suspect that this is how long Kevin's in a coma before he finally passes on.
13:12 They're calling out the final day of his life,
13:14 and he's being ushered into the afterlife by his mother.
13:17 You see, at the end of the surgery sequence, Kevin cries out for his mommy.
13:20 He's looking to her for help, but she doesn't come.
13:23 It's only in the final shot of the movie that she arrives.
13:26 This blurry, nightmare-fuel, faceless homunculus in the back?
13:29 Yeah, that right there is his mommy, and she's telling him to go to sleep, to pass on.
13:33 Kevin is being released from his pain, and the movie ends.
13:36 But why is his mom here now?
13:37 Well, to understand that, we have to zoom out.
13:39 You see, this whole time I've been trying to prove to you that Kevin's in a coma,
13:42 and I feel real good about that conclusion and the evidence that we've presented so far,
13:45 but in the process, I've been having to ignore what's happening around Kevin,
13:49 specifically around his parents.
13:51 This whole movie's premise is that Kaylee and Kevin's dad disappears one night.
13:55 Notice that I say "dad" specifically and not "parents."
13:58 That's actually in the official movie's description.
14:00 So why is dad gone, and where is mom?
14:02 Well, we hear mentions of mom very sparingly.
14:05 Early on, we hear the question.
14:07 [Kids talking]
14:08 Shortly afterward, we spend some quality time with mom,
14:11 in one of the most disturbing scenes of the movie.
14:13 Kaylee is brought up to her parents' room by the mysterious voice.
14:16 Her dad is sitting, hunched on the bed.
14:18 Kaylee looks away for a moment, and suddenly her dad is gone, replaced with her mom.
14:22 After a half-hearted "hey, we're getting a divorce, kiddo" style talk,
14:25 [Kids talking]
14:28 we hear a very clear snapping sound.
14:31 [Snapping]
14:33 [Snap]
14:35 This, paired with the repeated imagery we see of dowels hanging from the ceiling,
14:38 leads me to believe that their mother unfortunately took her own life.
14:42 She was so distraught over Kevin's condition that she cries repeatedly,
14:45 the family gets a divorce, and then she ultimately ends it all.
14:48 This works with why we hear Kaylee asking about the crying,
14:51 and why at a later point when asked about mom, she says,
14:53 [Kids talking]
14:55 That's also why mom's at the end of the movie,
14:57 helping to ease Kevin into the afterlife.
14:59 It's because she's there too. She's also dead.
15:02 And so we've established why we don't see mom, but then what explains dad's disappearance?
15:06 Well, Kevin's dad just doesn't come to visit anymore.
15:08 We know that Kevin's been in his hospital bed for 572 days,
15:11 based on the text from the end of the movie.
15:13 572 days in a coma.
15:16 Almost two years. Dad just can't do it anymore.
15:19 He disappears.
15:20 There's only one person left who wants to come and see Kevin,
15:23 who will sit with him and watch cartoons with him on the hospital TV,
15:26 who still talks to him, Kaylee.
15:28 But even she eventually succumbs to the monster.
15:30 [Kids talking]
15:36 Even she gives up to the hopeless darkness that Kevin won't wake up.
15:40 Her mouth was stolen. She disappears too, just like everyone else.
15:43 One of the final shots of the movie is a return to the stair banister,
15:46 upside down, the way Kevin saw it after his fall.
15:49 This provides our story a complete bookend.
15:51 We return back to where everything began.
15:53 The house at this point has figuratively and literally been turned upside down,
15:58 and now appears to Kevin in the way that he saw it after his tumble.
16:01 Skinnamarink is a tragic tale of a family broken apart.
16:04 Of a loving father, mother, and sister forced to confront an unforgiving and unending medical condition.
16:09 And the little boy who's trapped in a hospital bed with no way out,
16:12 trying to understand it all through the grainy, dark filter of his unconscious state.
16:16 Even the name Skinnamarink tells us exactly what this movie's about.
16:20 It's the name of a children's nursery rhyme all about love.
16:22 Skinnamarink-a-dink-a-dink, Skinnamarink-a-do, I love you.
16:26 I love you in the morning, and in the afternoon.
16:28 I love you in the evening, and underneath the moon.
16:30 That is the central theme of the film.
16:32 Love.
16:33 And that's also the true horror of this film.
16:35 That there are just some things that love can't overcome.
16:38 Some things that are so dark, so ceaseless, that they swallow all that love away.
16:43 This film really hit so much harder than I expected a TikTok-hyped art house horror film to do.
16:48 So, if you have kids, give them a hug.
16:50 If you are a kid, go give your parents a hug.
16:52 We gotta counteract the horribly sad with something wholesome.
16:55 But hey, if you ever find yourself trapped in a dream house with disappearing doors and windows,
16:59 you're probably gonna want some food delivered to you.
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18:33 Thanks again to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video, and as always, remember,
18:36 it's all just a theory. A Film Theory!
18:39 And cut!
18:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]