‘Under the Skin’ is a science fiction art film written and directed by Jonathan Glazer. The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name by a Dutch-born, Scotland-based writer of fiction Michel Faber.
The storyline revolves around a group of mysterious alien visitors, who came to the Earth with some unknown, but clearly rather macabre, agenda. Since their physiognomy varies slightly from that of the humans, to blend seamlessly amongst the human populace, they devised a technique to extract and don human skin. Obviously, there aren’t that many people that would consider donating their entire epidermis for charitable purposes, let alone walk around raw-fleshed just so that some wicked aliens can use their skin for their nefarious purposes.
Because of this, the aliens came up with a cunning scheme, where one of them, in the form of well-rounded Scarlett Johansson, drives around in a van, seducing and picking up lonely men on the streets of Scotland. These hapless randy men follow the attractive alien seductress like a mouse mesmerised by a snake, until they meet their gruesome, untimely deaths.
The routine repeats, until this femme fatale (in the true meaning of the word) encounters a lonely, sexually innocent man with a facial deformity (The film’s director didn’t want to use prosthetics for the role of this man with neurofibromatosis, and instead recruited an individual with the condition through Changing Faces, a charity that supports people with facial disfigurements). She seduces him, initially planning to treat him as all the others before him, but then something changes inside her, she lets her victim escape and herself flees to the Scottish Highlands with the rest of the aliens hot in her pursuit.
Later, at a bus stop, she meets a lonely man who brings her home, and offers her food and shelter. The two become attracted to each other but their attempt at romance ends in disaster (cue a significant physical incompatibility). Confused (you would be, wouldn’t you), the woman (if that’s what she is) wanders off into a forest, where she first encounters a commercial logger, who warns her that the woods can be treacherous, and finally takes shelter in a vacant bothy. She is woken abruptly and finds herself molested by the logger she met previously. She runs into the forest, but the man catches her and tries to rape her – though you cannot help but feel he may not quite like what he finds under the skin.
True, Under the Skin has some rather slower parts, but if you will stick with the movie until the very end, you will be rewarded by the haunting, visually stunning yet deeply unsettling scenes, when Scarlett Johansson in the role of the alien temptress woos her hapless victims to their grisly deaths, as well as by the film’s truly disturbing climax.