In the internet era, plenty of movies have gotten a sort of secondary fame by virtue of what you might call clip culture. One scene, or one joke, or even just one frame can go viral, independently of the movie that it's in. Everyone's seen that GIF of Chow Yun-fat giving a thumbs-up, but only a relative handful of people know it's from A Better Tomorrow II.
There's a lot going on in Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, but most horror fans only know of it because of Mathilda May's nudist vampire. In some cases, this does the original work a quiet disservice, if only because that kind of selective editing can't help but take things out of context. It cuts out any and all greater meaning in order to create one more patch on the great quilt that is internet discourse.
Under the Skin is a good example. It's one of the creepiest movies of 2014, has landed on several "best films of the 21st century" lists, and was nominated for a host of awards, but the internet primarily remembers it because Scarlett Johansson spends most of the movie in various states of undress. As a result, it's easy to find short clips from Under the Skin, but only a relative handful of people have actually seen it in full.
Fortunately, you now have an easy option to fix that. Under the Skin is streaming for free on multiple platforms, making it easier than ever to check out the entire movie for yourself. In Under the Skin, Johannson plays an unnamed woman who preys upon the lost and lonely inhabitants of a city in Scotland.
When she finds a prospective victim, she lures them to an isolated location and makes them disappear. In the 2000 novel that Under the Skin is based upon, there is no ambiguity about what's happening. The woman (named Isserley in the book, but left deliberately nameless in the film) is the bait in an extraterrestrial trap: abducting humans so they can be turned into an expensive delicacy for an alien species.
Under the Skin, conversely, is a loose, Lynchian adaptation that lends itself to multiple interpretations. On the surface level, it's essentially an arthouse remake of Species, with Johannson's protagonist out to kill everyone she can find who won't be immediately missed. There are no panicked government agents or conspiracy theorists to explain the plot; all the exposition you get from Under the Skin is what Johannson gives you, and that isn’t much.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
