‘Skinamarink’ Will Stream on Shudder Feb. 2

The plot follows two children who wake up home alone and it appears the doors and windows have disappeared from their home.

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Skinamarink (2022) tells a horror story from the perspective of a very young child.

At the end of 2022 a strange horror movie started going viral on the internet. Skinamarink hadn’t been released yet, but the buzz from those who had seen it was so loud horror fans started searching the internet for a pirated copy. Luckily, Kyle Edward Ball’s experimental horror film found a distributer and hit select theaters Jan. 13, 2023. The film will now be widely available to horror fans on Feb. 2 when it hits the Shudder streaming service.

Skinamarink is a dreamy (nightmare-y?) horror film with almost no dialogue. The plot follows two children who wake up home alone and it appears the doors and windows have disappeared from their home. Trapped with a bizarre entity, the young children pretty much do what you’d expect children to do. For fans who have been bored by endless franchise reboots, remakes, requels and genre tropes, Skinamarink is an entirely new horror experience.

The concept for the film came from a YouTube channel run by writer/director Kyle Edward Ball. He would create shorts based on nightmares shared by his subscribers. Skinamarink is based on his short film Heck and was filmed in Ball’s actual childhood home.

While some viewers have felt confused or bored by the film others have found it singularly terrifying. Some people have referred to Skinamarink as the movie that’s “traumatizing TikTok“. Rachel Ho of Exclaim says that “Much like in a real dream, Skinamarink‘s storyline doesn’t make a lot of sense. A narrative does exist and can be followed, but it’s intentionally disjointed and plays out almost as separate vignettes. Rather than the plot, the terror of the film comes from a familiar dread that paints the entire film.” Polygon said that Skinamarink is “this generation’s Blair Witch Project.”

Skinamarink will be added to Shudder on Feb. 2.

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Meet The Author

Chrissy is the co-founder of Creepy Catalog. She has over 10 years of experience writing about horror, a degree in philosophy and Reiki level II certification.

Chrissy Stockton