In the internet era, plenty of movies have gotten a sort of secondary fame by virtue of what you might call excerpt culture. One scene, or one joke, or even just one frame can go viral, independently of the movie that it’s in. Everyone’s seen that GIF of Chow Yun-fat giving a thumbs-up, but only a relative handful of people know it’s from A Better Tomorrow II. There’s a lot going on in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce, but most horror fans only know of it because of Mathilda May’s nudist vampire.
In some cases, this does the original work a quiet disservice, if only because that kind of selective editing can’t help but take things out of context. It cuts out any and all greater meaning in order to create one more patch on the great quilt that is internet discourse.
Under the Skin is a good example thereof. It’s one of the creepiest movies of 2014, has landed on several “best films of the 21st century” lists, and was nominated for a host of awards, but the internet primarily remembers it because Scarlett Johansson spends most of the movie in various states of undress. As a result, it’s easy to find short clips from Under the Skin, but only a relative handful of people have actually seen it in full. Fortunately, you now have an easy option to fix that. Under the Skin is currently free to stream via Tubi, the people’s streaming service.
In Under the Skin, Johannson plays an unnamed woman who preys upon the lost and lonely inhabitants of a city in Scotland. When she finds a prospective victim, she lures them to an isolated location and makes them disappear.
In the 2000 novel that Under the Skin is based upon, there is no ambiguity about what’s happening. The woman (named Isserley in the book, but left deliberately nameless in the film) is the bait in an extraterrestrial trap: abducting humans so they can be turned into an expensive delicacy for an alien species.
Under the Skin, conversely, is a loose, Lynchian adaptation that lends itself to multiple interpretations. On the surface level, it’s essentially an arthouse remake of Species, with Johannson’s protagonist out to kill everyone she can find who won’t be immediately missed. There are no panicked government agents or conspiracy theorists to explain the plot; all the exposition you get from Under the Skin is what Johannson gives you, and that isn’t much.
Get a little deeper, and it’s a movie about an alien’s first few days as a human, or a cultural commentary, or an extended metaphor for sex and sexuality. Johannson’s protagonist often appears fascinated by the most mundane details in her environment, from ants to other people to her own body. Even when she’s actively luring men to their deaths, she isn’t particularly vindictive. It’s just something she does.
That sense of the impersonal extends to the movie’s basic style. It takes almost 14 minutes before anyone speaks aloud in Under the Skin, and music often takes the place of any kind of dialogue. Many scenes are filmed with hidden cameras from strange angles, and most of the actors besides Johannson are amateurs or newcomers. It all adds up to make Under the Skin feel more like an alien reality show than any kind of thriller.
It’s not hard to see why the movie isn’t better-known, and why it bombed. Under the Skin just feels wrong almost from the jump, with a love of long still shots that can’t help but be reminiscent of student films. If you stick with it, however, Under the Skin is hard to forget. Some of its images will stick with you for a long time.
In a strange way, Under the Skin can be seen as the third and final part of an informal trilogy of Johannson’s films, all of which are to some degree about Johannson playing with her own image. At the time, Johannson had been acting in films since she was 10; had been a household name at least since she was 19, following her breakout role in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation; and was fresh off of her role in The Avengers.
2013’s Her features Johannson in a voice role as Samantha, an AI-powered OS, where she’s a literal commodity. She followed it up with 2014’s Lucy, in which Johannson’s title character is initially abused and ignored before going on to become the most powerful person on the planet. Under the Skin finishes the trilogy by turning Johannson into a hidden threat, like a trapdoor spider in celebrity skin.
All three are interesting roles for someone like Johannson to take, particularly at the height of her Avengers fame, and all three work as a direct commentary about the position she’s reached. Call it Johannson’s Product Trilogy: she’s something that’s been sold to you, but you really ought to read the warning on the side of the box.
Under the Skin is now streaming on Tubi.
