I didn’t find any thread on this, which surprised me! So this is it.
Under the Skin
This just reached here, we saw it on Saturday in the only theatre in town showing it - it’s so new it hasn’t even gone through government classification yet. Interesting IMDB says it was released in 2013 though …
We both thought from the start ‘they’ were aliens, but on reflection they could be some weird form of local life. Let’s assume aliens though.
I took her to be a hunter or gatherer for them. And the motorcycle guys some sort of overseers or clean-up crew - the main one seemed to do both at different times.
The ‘pool’ that the victims willingly slid under was I suppose a visual metaphor for what was really happening to them. But what was that? It seemed it could only happen in certain physical locations they had presumably prepared in some way. And what happened to them under … were they being digested inside their own skin, like a fly after a spider bite?
What did she see between her legs? I thought she was shocked she had a hole there, whereas my partner thought she was shocked she didn’t.
A great great film, left us both very thoughtful. I immediately though of Kubrick.
I haven’t seen the film, but I have read the book, and that is quite different in some major ways. MAJOR SPOILER: She is an alien, and she harvests humans for their meat, which is quite a delicacy where she come from. The humans are treated like veal cattle before being slaughtered and shipped off to the alien world.
The aliens are four legged and are quite like intelligent dogs. She has had her body surgically changed so she can walk on two legs and pass for a human.
I saw it in the theater and it will be in my top 10, possibly top 5, of the year.
I can’t answer any of your questions though because I was too busy being mesmerized, soaking in the music and atmosphere and Scarlett. I wanted to see it again but it disappeared quickly and I missed my chance.
It’s been a great year for movies, and it’s only early June! Has Only Lovers Left Alive made it there yet? That’s my favorite movie of the year so far. Yes, it’s (yet another) vampire movie but this one has Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in it, and the plot is very different from other vampire movies, with different rules, and I thought the music is great. You get to see the incredible Yasmine Hamdam sing live, which is worth the entire cost of the movie by itself.
(1) The deformed guy escaped (or she let him go) from one of their processing facilities and presumably they knew he’d be on foot and which possible directions he could go. In the book, a similar incident happens, and the aliens are able to track down the escapees because they’d been castrated, tongue removed, and force-fed until they weighed almost a thousand pounds and could only waddle away slowly.
(2) As noted above, the aliens don’t have telepathic powers, so they couldn’t track her.
(3) I interpreted the red river to be the meat or food that the captured males were turned into, a slurry if you will.
The book and the movie are so different that it’s hard to even call them by the same name. I wish I hadn’t read the book first as it takes away all of the mystery. On the other hand, if I hadn’t, I would’ve spent the whole movie saying, “What the fuck is happening?”
Jesus, do they even speak English in Scotland? I couldn’t understand a single fucking thing when Scarlett Johansen wasn’t speaking.
Sure, but the biker goes directly to the front of the house just before the guy comes through the back fence, they can’t even see each other at that point. The biker smashes a car window, pops the boot lid, and then turns and goes to the back of the house exactly as the guy arrives there. So the biker knew exactly where, and to the second exactly when, the guy would be.
I thought that too, But it seemed to move in an unnatural way for a thick liquid, more like molten lava I would have said. There were independent sub-streams moving through the bulk of it, at times - like there was some vestige of will left in it somehow.
There are movies where that kind of thing is annoying, but this wasn’t one. You were so clearly in the hands of a master film-maker that you didn’t mind, the puzzle and the ride were part of the designed viewing experience.
I missed one from the OP. I’m with your wife on the character not finding a hole. She was desperately trying to be something approaching human, but was denied even that small consolation.
There were several parallels with the book, but many of the strongest scenes of the movie were completely new and had no origin in the book at all, namely the deformed guy (does not appear at all in the book), and the whole subplot with the guy on the bus (also is not from the book).
The movie seemed to be more about what it means (and how much it sucks) to be human, and the book was more a meditation on animal rights and eating meat.
I can’t remember the last time I bought the soundtrack to a movie, but I absolutely loved the score.