Blu-ray Film Review

Skinner (1993) • Blu-ray [101 Films]

A man rents an apartment in a couple’s house, while at night roaming the streets with knives looking for victims to skin…

There are moments in Ivan Nagy’s Skinner where it feels like its absurdities will give way and the film will start to disturb. One of those moments sees protagonist Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi) living up to his surname and skinning a victim while relaying his tragic past to her corpse. His boilerplate backstory isn’t too discomfiting, however, it’s more the bleak visuals of a skinned person…

Specifically, it’s not seeing a person without their skin, it’s the removed skin itself-taken off as easily as a coat. It isn’t a realistic or entirely convincing prop but it’s oddly upsetting. That’s because it inspires dark and intrusive thoughts. The idea that, as much as we might like to think we’re indestructible, we are still physical things — vulnerable and destroyable. It’s the unnerving notion that we can be prodded and poked after death, maybe even taken apart like an old car being stripped for parts…