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.

Band girl Carolyn Harper is out with football jock Andy Kitzmiller late at night. They have a fight. Andy abandons her at the water's edge. She goes missing. Everybody in town is affected.

Writer/director Jennifer Reeder is drawing a lot from Twin Peaks in both content and stylistically. I don't know much about her other than she is apparently a David Lynch fan. This movie is full of Lynchian touches. The dead girl trope is common enough, but it is all the little things that are pointing to Lynch. This isn't quite Twin Peaks which is centered on the cop investigating the case. This indie is more centered on the kids. I thought the Harper mother would advance the investigation. I did not expect her going this way, but sexual perversity is also Lynchian. This is not copying, but it is fandom filmmaking.

Horrible watch, will not watch again, and am actively telling you to avoid.

This is like 10 short stories all unnecessarily set at the same time during a tragedy that barely has a storyline other than some poor girl's mom slowing losing her mind in grief.

Imagine all the "witty" dialogue of Juno, a Kevin Smith movie, and the worst version of an American Degrassi combined, then remove most of the substance, and place it during a missing girl episode of CVU.

To make it worse, they do high school choir versions of pop songs, and after watching this empty she'll of a movie, I had to wait in the credits just to make sure they didn't resolve something.

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.

Now I reckon, since I will be not really in the extreme here (loving/hating), I am losing a lot of people already. But for those willing to read on, let me get into what my thoughts are on the movie, the overall feeling/mood it delivers and what that should mean.

Now I've only seen Twin Peaks Season 1 (the very first one) and I will review that show when I get around to watch the rest. Why is that important. Without knowing where that show goes and not saying this is a carbon copy, this indeed can be put in the same universe as that show. People act weird, there are many different elements of different genres mixed in. You might think that makes this convoluted or genius. It will depend on your own views and maybe even state of mind while watching this.

Suspension of disbelief, cliches and a lot of weird dialog not to mention supernatural stuff happening (or maybe not?), it is tough to put a finger on it and pin point where this is supposed to be on a certain scala. Again, it is your taste that will decide which direction you will lean on concerning your view on this. One thing is for sure: it is very well made.