Sumith Prasad
Shudder’s found footage horror film ‘Skinamarink’ revolves around four-year-old Kevin and his six-year-old sister Kaylee, who are left alone at their house during a certain night following their father’s disappearance. While the two siblings try to safeguard each other, a strange eerie voice starts to give them commands. The entity’s control over the two children eventually threatens their lives. The film progresses through Kevin’s confrontation with the entity and the aftermath of the same. Since the film is very ambiguous concerning its setting, the viewers must be eager to know more about the same. Well, here’s what we can share about the setting of the horror film! SPOILERS AHEAD.
When Does Skinamarink Take Place?
‘Skinamarink’ takes place in 1995. The foundation of the film’s narrative, two siblings getting trapped in their house with a monstrous entity, is something that can be set in any period. Director Kyle Edward Ball set his film in the 1990s to fill in other specifics that form the horror in ‘Skinamarink.’ Ball’s film is a quintessential analog horror film that makes use of analog television to create fear. Setting the film in the 1990s justifies the use of the television and the cartoon episodes that appear at the time. In addition to the television, the telephone Kevin uses to call 9-1-1 and the sound it produces add to the eerie ambiance of the film and further justify the setting.
‘Silent Hill 2,’ a video game that was developed between 1999 and 2001, also inspired Ball to conceive the “ambiance” of the film set in 1995. “There’ll be hours in the video game [‘Silent Hill 2’] where nothing happens. You’re just walking around doing nothing. And after a while, it becomes so unnerving and creepy. I went in with that mindset a little bit for the movie,” Ball told Esquire. Ultimately, the setting of the 1990s, a period in which social media wasn’t a part of daily life, enhances the feeling of abandonment, which is a key component of the film’s horror.
Where Does Skinamarink Take Place? Is the House Real?
‘Skinamarink’ doesn’t reveal where the film is set. However, Kevin and Kaylee’s house is real and it gives a certain idea concerning the setting of the film. Ball shot his film inside his own childhood home, located in Edmonton, the capital city of the province of Alberta. The wood-panel walls, eerie hallway, and the scary basement of the house became the perfect stages for Kevin and Kaylee’s tale. Thus, it is safe to assume that the film takes place in Edmonton.
Ball used his home as the filming location because he was familiar with every nook of the place to create horror. “I knew the house, obviously, so well. Going into it, I thought, ‘I know the house. I don’t have to work at trying to make it personal because that’s already built in.’ I didn’t need to consciously think about what parts of the house scare me,” he told Roger Ebert. “It just flowed, and I found more and more that I didn’t have to do that work because I set the architecture of it from the beginning to work in my favor,” he added.
Furthermore, Ball’s decision to set the film in an unrevealed locality can be intentional. The director conceived the foundational idea of the film upon getting inspired by the recurrent tropes present in the nightmares he came to know about through the comment section of his YouTube channel “Bitesized Nightmares.” “I’d had a nightmare when I was little. I was in my parents’ house, my parents were missing, and there was a monster. And lots of people have shared this exact same dream,” Ball told Deadline. Since the people who shared the same nightmare with the director must be based in distinct countries, Ball may have wanted his film to have a universal appeal, which is gained by not setting the film in a particular disclosed region.
Read More: Do Kevin and Kaylee Die or Live in Skinamarink? [Spoiler]
