seriously, i just finished watching it, i have my criticisms which seem to fall in line with some others have made (i.e. drawn out etc.) but overall the film was great in the sense of being a film, i did not however feel great after watching it, i needed answers. its not the scariest movie ever but the implications and situation in general are very depressing and kinda stick in your head
9/10 :concerned-confusion: watch in the right headspace but also don’t watch if youre squeamish about bad things happening to (very) young kids
As far as we know it’s literally just a bad dream. This is how very small children dream, you had one of these nightmares too when you were that age.
there’s several interpretations,
spoiler
i dont like dream or coma theory for overplayed reasons and i’m not sure what to think of the abuse angle as valid of a belief i consider it, it doesnt really fit for my personal interpretaion of the story itself
spoiler
I saw a pretty compelling argument against dream/coma theories and its that we spend some pretty significant bits of the movie in the perspective of the sister, who goes and sees and does things that the brother doesnt know of and that he tries to ask her about. If it was either a normal or coma dream of the brothers you would expect it to either only follow him, or for him to know what the sister experienced, cause its his dream still.
If we are going by dream logic then we need to go by all the dream logic, and you dont really dream up a world that exists outside of your experience of it, the dreamer experiences the dream.
The interpreteation I generally like the most is that it basically just is a Hansel and Gretel story, the brother was up after bedtime talking to strangers(“Are you hiding?” in the start of the film before he falls) and that may or may not have attracted the creature to target him and his sister, or nothing they did or could have done influenced the creatures actions, it just decided to ruin these kids existence for as long as it wants. Technically this is a “darker” take in a way cause if its a dream he can wake up, and if hes in a coma he can wake up or die, but if its a real creature doing these things for real there are no limits, but that isnt necessarily why I like it the most, I just think its better than all of the other ones.
The director essentially said something to the effect of “Beneath it all is a Hansel and Gretel story”, so I think thats kind of the baseline. Plus there are some parts that dont really follow the logic of just one kid dreaming one dream, things happen to the kids separately that the other isnt aware of or notices.
People often compare it to a kids dream or a fever dream, but for me specifically the childhood memory it evokes is what I’ll call a “dreamless fever”.
Its when you’re stuck with a fever and you are so weak and tired that you cant move your body properly, and you cant think properly either, and you are just stuck in bed waking up endlessly.
You dont like try to fall asleep or notice when you do, you just keep waking up, and probably the blinds are drawn cause you are supposed to rest or light hurts your eyes, so any amount of time could have passed, and you just wake up over and over again disoriented, and maybe the TV is on in the other room, or you could be watching the TV, but none of it makes sense, and you’re waking up over and over, and sometimes maybe your parents are talking but they sound like the teacher from peanuts, and next time you wake up they arent talking but you cant tell if its because its in the middle of the night or they just arent talking, and it keeps going.
Anytime I think back to Skinamarink I just remember how that feels like.
Some people say they like it better(I think overwhelmingly because of the length), personally I dont really like it, but it is interesting to see the difference in what is basically kind of a “classic” internet horror with an interesting style, and that style being taken to its extreme in the full length film.
In Heck, a lot of nothing happens all the time, theres usually a new “nothing” going on, while Skinamarink lingers on the same nothing happening for way longer. Also Heck has much more of the “youtube horror lore clues” sprinkled throughout where you can kind of get a basic sense of the relevant background and story, there are “clues” sort of like that in Skinamarink too, but its very difficult to get a sense of what is relevant to the direct events and what is just things the kids experienced previous to this for other reasons.
and for those of you who have see the film and felt disturbed aswell please watch this video, it didnt help much but it made me chuckle
movies like this (that prize vibe/aesthetic over plot) basically demand as much immersion as possible in order to have the best chance of working on you. the “couldn’t get thru it” ppl should try turning off their phones and all the lights and crankin’ up the volume if a theater viewing is not an option. I really worry for what the decline of theatrical exhibition will mean for the movies of da future tbh but movies like this, the outwaters and we’re all going. to the world’s fair give me some hope in the more experimental end of low-budget filmmaking.
I found this streaming somewhere but I thought it was a camrip so I decided to wait. Turns out that’s just what the movie looks like?
