Week 4: Old and New Weird: Under the Skin

This week I watched the movie Under the Skin, released in 2013, starring actress Scarlett Johansson. The movie takes place in Scotland as the alien disguised as a beautiful young women, drives the countryside, luring in young men into her van to take their meat. The movie is incredibly vague with why shes on this journey to collect their meat, it doesn't describe the reasons behind it but rather allows the viewer to watch her journey unfold and how the story transitions from a movie showcasing the brutal truth of humans and their alternative motives to something much more. Its a movie about self discovery, especially for the lead protagonists. She comes to earth with the only intent of harvesting human meat. She only views human men as a vessel that she can easily manipulate for what she needs. However she realizes that humans are much more than this, and she realizes that she wants to integrate into that society.

This movie succeeds in staying vague and questionable in the way that it never really explains whats happening. It does not explain if the scenes depicting the men being taken under the liquid abyss in the dark void room is real or if its just a  metaphor for something else. It does not explain the meat processing scene or what the meat is being used for, and it doesn't ever have to. The movie wants you to question it, to be confused by it. Its alien and us humans may never be able to comprehend what use they need our meat for.

The movie ends in a very similar way to how it started. In the start of the movie, Scarlett Johansson alien is naked and walks up upon a comatose but still living alien in human clothes. She has a single tear running down her cheek as our new alien undresses the clothes off the other now inert alien and dons them on herself. She leaves the alien in the hands of what I assume is another alien in disguise as a male motorcyclist. He picks up the inert alien women and carries her away never to be seen again. Scarlett Johansson alien is meant to be the replacement. Its a cycle where once a female alien has gone rogue and wishes to become human, they are hunted down by there boss and a replacement is sent to take the place. Our alien that we follow in the film is the same as those who came before, in that she grows a sympathy for humans, she wishes to be them but no matter how hard she tries, she cant understand. She cant become one of us because she just is not human, and no disguise can change that. She runs away from her mission and is hunted down by the motorcyclist boss but unlike the rest, is able to keep her off his trail, and when she dies, however sad it may be, she was able to break the cycle of alien after alien coming down to lure in more lonely men.

This movie is genuinely fantastic, if for a very specific kind of person. I've seen this movie panned and hated but also have seen this movie receive a lot of praise in its execution. Its a very unique way of story telling that you really don't ever see in movies now and its definitely worth at least one viewing. Very creepy but incredibly interesting.