Under the Skin (2014)

That mirror could do with a clean...

Jonathan Glazer's latest film is a deliciously creepy, almost comically absurd foray into horror. It's kind of both brilliantly clever and unbelievably silly.
Essentially, Scarlett Johansson spends just under two hours driving around Glasgow in a white van, luring unsuspecting locals into her gooey alien lair. They are repeatedly submerged in a sticky black pool, which seems to extract their flesh and turn them into elastic sacks of skin. It works - but I'm not sure why.

Firstly, there is very little dialogue in this film. Our unnamed alien only interacts with others sporadically, and even then the speech is limited to her rehearsed lines, prepared in order to persuade various men that they really want to go home with her. Obviously, it's Scar-Jo: they don't take much convincing. There are moments, though, when the whole routine strains credibility. Quite why Johansson's home had to be a derelict, pitch-black hovel, complete with creaky stairs and absolutely no natural light is beyond me. You would imagine that at least one of the men would have paused at the door and thought, 'hmm, better not.'

Under the Skin was shot partly undercover, with a lot of the people Johannson encounters responding to her requests unaware that they were being filmed, until Glazer's crew jumped out from behind the van with the necessary legal documents. Yet most of the crowd scenes are just authentic depictions of daily life in various parts of the city. Being from Glasgow, I kept hoping I'd spot myself wandering through Buchanan Galleries. Disappointingly, I was robbed of a cameo. However, the effects of this technique are quietly extraordinary. The everyday seems unflinchingly alien. As Johansson walks wide-eyed past people glued to their phones, consuming various deep-fried goods, and squealing drunkenly outside dodgy nightclubs, we begin to feel our own otherness. The modern world becomes an uncanny space, strangely surreal in its familiarity.

There are some fantastic scenes. As the alien begins to adapt to our model of living, she pushes herself to integrate. An incident involving a slice of black forrest gateau is particularly well done. Throughout, Johansson is wonderfully attentive to the implications of her position as the outsider within. I'm so glad she's finally doing cool stuff again. We might now be able to move past He's Just Not that Into You. 

I was totally on-board with Under the Skin until the last scene, which sadly seizes on every sci-fi cliche you can imagine. Aliens, like ghosts, are always most unsettling when you either can't see them or can't see past the human in them. But it still works as a semi-comic, punkish pastiche of the alien genre (if that's a thing), and the music is super terrifying. The eery feel of this film stayed with me for days. I might just love it. And it has the best poster I've seen in ages.