Sumith Prasad
Directed by Kyle Edward Ball, Shudder’s found footage horror film ‘Skinamarink’ follows six-year-old Kaylee and her four-year-old brother Kevin, two siblings who wake up in the middle of a certain night to find out that their dad is missing. They decide to sleep downstairs due to their father’s absence, only to hear a “strange” and eerie voice from upstairs. The entity eventually removes Kaylee’s mouth and eyes and asks Kevin to put a knife in his eye. As the film progresses, the viewers must be pondering over what exactly is this monstrous entity. Well, let us share our thoughts regarding the same! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Theories About Monster Entity
The monster entity in ‘Skinamarink’ is an unrevealed being with a strange eerie voice. It mostly stays upstairs and invites Kaylee and Kevin to spend time with it. It turns violent when Kaylee disobeys it, leading it to remove the little girl’s eyes and mouth. Its obsession with violence becomes more evident when it asks Kevin to put a knife in his eye as well. Kyle Edward Ball’s film eventually ends with a vague face that seemingly belongs to the monster appearing before Kevin but without explicitly showing what or who it is.
As far as Ball is concerned, the monster could be anything. “The monster in the script is always referred to as just ‘Voice in the Dark.’ But people call it the Entity, the Demon, the Skinamarink, the Monster. […] First of all, every fan theory is true, and every fan theory is false,” Ball told Esquire. The most obvious answer to the question is that the monster is a supernatural ghost-like entity that preys on children. The numerous photographs of children with vague or missing faces can be the previous victims of the ghost. However, ‘Skinamarink’ is extremely nuanced to settle with such an obvious theory.
The monster can be a creation of Kevin’s subconscious, especially after he falls from the stairs. A popular fan theory states that the little boy gets into a coma after the fall, making him imagine the monster and its confrontation with him and his sister Kaylee. The theory holds enough weight because of the attention the film gives to his accident. After nearly meeting death, Kevin’s subconscious must have become vulnerable enough for his repressed fears to come together and form a lengthy dream about a monster and the entity harming his family. But again, Ball’s film isn’t that straightforward.
Even if Kevin is dreaming, the monster can be a representation of his likely abusive father. After waking up abruptly, the first thing Keylee and Kevin notice is the disappearance of their house’s doors and windows. The same can be an indication of how their father has trapped them inside the place to abuse them. The lack of an escape door can be representing the helplessness of the siblings, who are too vulnerable to run away from their abusive father. The siblings’ house gradually resembling a doll house must be an indication of how their father is treating them as mere puppets.
Kevin seemingly hurting himself with the knife shows us how he must have been forced to harm himself in the past, likely by his father. The monster hurting Kaylee when she displeases it resembles how a parent would punish a child’s disobedience, further adding weight to the possibility of the monster being the dad. If that’s the case, the vague face that appears at the of the film belongs to Kevin’s dad. It also explains why the monstrous entity seemingly has a human face. The face must be appearing after Kevin wakes up from his coma to see his dad, who asks him to sleep.
As the film progresses to its end, Kevin witnesses an enormous amount of blood on a wall along with the noises produced by the monster. At the end of the same, he calls for his “mommy.” Kevin can be dreaming about the death of his mother, possibly killed by his father. That can be the reason why Kaylee doesn’t want to talk about their mother since they must have witnessed her horrifying death. When the monster attacks her, the mom asks Kaylee to close her eyes, which may mean that the siblings’ mother tried to receive all the hurt from her abusive husband to protect their children before getting killed by him.
In ‘Skinamarink,’ the father’s disappearance never gets explained, which makes us believe that he can be the monster. Ever since the film’s release, the ardent admirers of the film have been coming up with theories that range from Kevin being a murderer and the monster being his alter ego to the entire family being dead and controlled by a superior demonic entity. The excellence of Ball’s film lies in its ambiguity which allows the viewers to explain the monster according to their subjective understanding.
Read More: Joshua Bookhalter Tribute on Skinamarink: How Did He Die?
