Cannibalistic humanoids and butyraceous posteriors abound in Steve Wolsh’s slack horror mash-up that borrows much from Neil Marshall’s genuinely bone-chillingThe Descent. In 2005’s The Descent, blind albino cannibals who live in subterranean enclaves assail an all-female spelunking detachment. Here the C.H.U.D.s du jour hang out in a marsh on Cape Cod and have at it with a batch of comely coeds and their buff beaus who have holed up in a stately manse. The “what” and “why” never come into conversation—as the bodies begin to amass, the lithe twentysomethings don’t begin to consider how a tribe of primal alabaster “creepers” suddenly came to be in the middle of America’s most venerated vacation seaboard. Nothing, not even a good ol’ “What the fuck?”
Somewhere in the middle, I half expected a rewind to an experiment gone wrong or some form of contamination like The Hills Have Eyes, but it didn’t happen. Wolsh dives straight into the murk of carnage and undulating breasts and never comes up to catch his breath. As a result, the gonzo assault becomes an uneven straddle ofEvil Dead camp and rote splatter, leaving Muck to hobble along disjointedly like Jamie Lee Curtis’ battered heroine as she tries to escape Michael Myers in Halloween. Continue reading
You can imagine the appeal of playing a Luciferian incarnation rooted in the material world. The “Hellboy” superhero series nailed it with camp and gusto. Here, based on the novel by Joe Hill, aka Stephen King’s son, Radcliffe plays Ig (Ignatius), a DJ in a small Northwestern burg. He has a very public breakup with his girlfriend (Juno Temple) and becomes the prime suspect in her murder when she’s found with her head bashed in at the base of their romantic getaway spot – a tree fort deep in the Pac-North woods. 
Going back to “Stranger Than Paradise” and “
If you haven’t read Faber’s novel and have no discerning of its plot, educate yourself no more; going in less educated will yield you a better viewing experience. Glazer’s arcane imagery and Mica Levi’s all-consuming score forge an indelible confluence that is not your typical cinematic fare. Sure, there are arguably three acts, but it’s more a washing over than a sum of parts with a resolution; when “Skin” does subscribe to these traditional framework devices, that’s when it starts to loose its sheen and transcendent allure.
Cellphones naturally don’t work (though the reason why is solid) and each swing of a creaky door yields either a booby trap, knife-wielding psychopath or false alarm gasp from the audience.
For What it's Worth 