Wick's Review

Summary - Really Great 4.5

Scarlett Johansson has never been more alluring or revealing than in Under the Skin, her second inhuman hottie role of the year. Her gave us her voice. Under the Skin gives us her body, extraordinary face and all. Serious ScoJo fans must see it, the adventurous ones anyway. It’s a super sexy, creepy & primo alien movie.

This is some seriously weird SciFi. Or is it fantasy? Hard to say. It’s kind of got a vampire vibe, what with a sexually alluring creature preying on humans while appearing to be human. That’s one hell of a recipe for a great movie, a benchmark that Under the Skin easily exceeds.

ScoJo gushes about what a genius director Jonathan Glazer is in this Red Band Featurette. He’s a Brit and she sounds like one in the minimal dialogue he gives her in his movie. Most of the movie’s blokes think they’ve scored big time when they get a load of her. Unfortunately things don’t work out well for them.

Glazer’s Under the Skin is a meditation on sexual attraction, especially male sexual attraction to a hot chick in Glasgow and its Scottish surroundings. Could of filmed it anywhere, but its funding came out of Scotland. Anyway, the males of Scotland acquit themselves quite well in the main, being naturally attracted to an alien who looks like a slutty Scarlett Johansson, yet most are remarkably honorable in their intentions. Given how far she walks on the wild side, it’s a surprise more don’t venture into sexual assault territory.

Glazer has made a simply brilliant film, one that establishes its alien premise early, yet never reveals more than necessary to advance the plot to the next juncture, which typically means the next victim. This leads to what seemed like a dozen reveals, each exquisitely tense, occasionally funny, sometimes terribly sad, but always entirely riveting.

The alien who inhabits ScoJo’s voluptuous face and body shows flickers of empathy, echoes of humanity, and then acts on them tenderly. This too occurs in stages that are brilliantly conceived, casted and produced.

Stately in the extreme, Under the Skin is a test of stamina, even if it maintains an exquisite tension from the very first frame to the final intriguing image. That’s almost its only ding however, leaving it just shy of perfection, a benchmark of understated SciFi fantasy.

Acting - Great 4.0

Scarlett Johansson inks her second claim in a row to SciFi legend status as a stranger in a woman’s body. Daring in the extreme, she performs her first scene bare as the day she was born, yet voluptuous as Venus at 30, which just happens to be ScoJo’s age. About the nickname: She needs one that rolls off the tongue. Yes?

Her famously smokey voice lacks the warmth it had in Her. Why? Her alien chick is often uncertain about what she’s encountering, whereas her sexy Siri in Her was always a step ahead of the game. She’s notably curious about her body in Under the Skin, making the movie a meditation on star-fucking on top of it all.

She’s got a solid supporting cast, nearly all guys, not counting extras. Most are rookies, some with no lines.

• Adam Pearson as a man with neurofibromatosis, which Pearson seems to have. Brave and brilliant turn, this. His head disfigured by tumors, this dude hasn’t exactly been a chick magnet, till now.
• Jeremy McWilliams as The Bad Man
• Paul Brannigan as a clubgoer who scores with ScoJo
• Krystof Hádek as a Czech traveler who crosses paths with her
• Michael Moreland as The Quiet Man
• Jessica Mance as an Alien, perhaps the one who gives up her tight outfit for ScoJo

Film - Really Great 4.5

Wow. Under the Skin is a tremendously accomplished film by Jonathan Glazer. He and Walter Campbell loosely adapted Michel Faber’s left wing SciFi novel for their screenplay, wisely dropping its economic politics to focus on sexual politics, thus making a statement about human identity. Without having read the non-award winning novel, we can safely assume this to be a case where the movie is better than the book.

Glazer and crew also deserve credit for creating a polished SciFi film on a small budget, notwithstanding two or three screens full of FX credits. Their film is in a league with MOON and Europa Report as recent SciFi benchmarks produced on non-monumental budgets.

Its focus on human skin as the vessel of human identity brings to mind Almodóvar‘s 2011 classic The Skin I Live In, another seriously weird fantasy.

How cool is Glazer’s creation? Its companion sites are extraordinary conceptual works of browser art.

• T0uch Me — The Me is She. Or would it be Her?
• Touched Some1 — I entered Today.
• 1 OF MANY — Let this one take its time to develop.

Edge - Sordid 2.7

An exceptionally sexy movie with almost no sex, a very violent movie with almost no violence, Under the Skin earns its pronounced sordidness through the brilliance of its concept and purity of its execution.

No sex but lots of protosexual situations, aka nudity, including from superstar ScoJo and a parade of Scottish lads, most with their Johnsons pointing north while they march to their unholy demise.

Reality - Supernatural 3.1

Under the Skin features brilliantly conceived and executed aliens amongst prosaic humans. Even its Tumblr page is worth a tumble.

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