Knives and Skin

Alternative title would be: The only ones who smoked better stuff than the writer of this movie are the ones who voted for it to win any awards.

We held out hope that there was going to be some redeemable quality to this flick, but there is none.

This movie reminds me of a visit to the modern art display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a long time ago. I spent a couple hours looking and laughing and thinking "I could have made these exhibits in just a few minutes!" The same could be said of this movie- "I could have written it in about ten minutes." Kids could have put together this random mess in a short amount of time (although they would have probably skipped most of the sexual content- and that wouldn't have changed the movie at all- for better or worse.

A young girl named Carolyn goes missing after a date with a jock and the rest of the town slowly begins to unravel due to it. Knives and Skin has a dash of Twin Peaks, some Riverdale, and a little bit of Short Cuts and puts them in a blender to create one of the strangest, but most unique films that I've seen in years.

Knives and Skin doesn't always work, but when it does, it's quite an experience. The pacing is slow and deliberate and it's more character study than plot driven whodunit. This lack of any tangible plot and its constant tonal shifts do hurt the film. At times, it seems like it wants to be a dark comedy and, other times, it wants to be a straight drama, but there are so many odd characters and strange sequences that throw you for a loop and make you question everything you're seeing.

At nearly 2 hours, it's a bit long, but by the end when everything comes together, you won't even remember the run time, but you'll remember how it made you feel. People expecting a creepy murder mystery or slasher film will be incredibly disappointed, but those who can judge a film on its own merits might really enjoy this and they'll certainly have to enjoy the performance of Marika Engelhardt as the missing girl's mother who has a slow descent into madness throughout the film. It's a brave, committed performance that deserves awards attention.

Oh. My. God.

This person isn't "influenced" by David Lynch, they actually just wrote fan fiction about Twin Peaks except in the 2010s with a more diverse cast. I can see this person literally taking the outline from the original 1990s Twin Peaks series and just...re-writing it. Poorly.

This isn't "original" or "stunning" it's absolute cringe. I wanted to like it, to meet it halfway, to give it a chance. The only reason I'm giving it three stars is because, well, I guess they tried.

But I'm not over-inflating the score or even sitting all the way through this embarrassing attempt by some sheltered nepo baby or college student whose parents gave them too much money. The only way this got made is something like that.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It had so many underlying themes/issues wrapped around the mystery of a missing teen. The story touches on family dynamics, coming of age, and the choices characters make. For me it was a combination Twin Peaks/American Beauty/Donnie Darko, but also refreshingly new at the same time. The Lynchian inspiration is obvious in many scenes. The use of the 1980s soundtrack was perfection, transporting you back to an earlier time, but while remaining very present. It may not be for everyone, but I think it's definitely worth a watch.

Coming of age movie? Slice of life? Honestly I have no idea how to classify this movie, it begins with a missing girl and then it ends at some point. The story feels like a bunch of random scenes tied together somehow and sometimes they involve the missing teenager. It was all very disjointed, surreal and confusing... And I couldn't look away.

It helps that the movie is incredibly well shot, everything from the scene composition, to the lighting, to the costumes and the scenery is pure eye candy. Even the scenes that are supposed to make you so uncomfortable you want to look away, you simply can't because of how beautiful the scene is. All elevated by some incredible music, both the choir covers of popular hits and the original soundtrack add so much to the film. It also helps that the performances are stellar from the entire cast.

This movie isn't for everyone, it's weird, but I really enjoyed it.