- Silence and darkness, followed by a point of light and a hint of sound. The point fills out to become a white spot, then a circle. The sound increases in intensity, more like an approaching swarm of locusts than music. Other sounds are spoken, but they are not words. They are more like the phonemes sputtered out by a baby learning to talk. Another circle emerges and the two form a concentric pattern, dark inside of light. The iris fills in, and the eye blinks. It's watching you and learning...something.
- Fast forward to a quiet stretch of highway at night. A motorcyclist (Jeremy McWilliams) drags a dead body out from the embankment and hauls it into a white van. A naked woman (Scarlett Johansson) strips the body of its clothes. She heads to a shopping mall for makeup and accessories. Now she's cruising around Glasgow, looking for a single man. Specifically, a man with no girlfriend and no family. She finds one (Kevin McAlinden). And another (Andrew Gorman). And then some more (Krystof Hádek, Adam Pearson).
- What happens to these men is a matter of some debate, even though we see it occur. They appear to be in a formless black room, walking toward the woman. She strips and they follow her lead. Just as they lose their last articles of clothing, they sink into a oily black ooze where apparently they remain for some time. One victim witnesses another implode into something resembling a wind-strewn bag of dead leaves. To say that the film prefers imagery to exposition is an understatement. It's never really clear what's happening or why, but the sights and sounds work in perfect concert to create powerful, indelible impressions.
- While watching Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, I couldn't help but be reminded of 2013's similarly abstract and avante-garde sci-fi Upstream Color. So why did I hate that film and like this one? Part of the lure here is surely Johansson's captivating performance as an utterly alien moral cypher who gradually realizes that the clinical detachment she employs in luring men to their doom apparently doesn't extend to feelings about her own body. There are deep sexual themes in play here, especially in her interactions with a deformed man (Pearson), a sensitive caregiver (Michael Moreland) and a brutal rapist (Dave Acton). The main attraction for me, however, is probably the tragically underrepresented Scottish scenery, ranging from urban danceclubs to rural castles and rustic forests. Add in Mica Levi's hypnotizing soundtrack and Glazer's admirable refusal to separate metaphor from reality, and you end up with a completely baffling film that I immediately want to see again.
- The imdb claims that "the men lured into the van...were not actors." This can't possibly be true. I imagine this only extends to those who did not end up naked in a dark room, because at some point you would know to get the hell out of there. Right, guys?
