MAY 22 - Knives and Skin

            I had a pretty dude-heavy lineup this week so it was a relief to arrive at grrrls day and Knives and Skin, Jennifer Reeder’s haunting 2019 thriller. The film begins with the disappearance of teenage Carolyn, marching band member and daughter of the choir director and, follows the aftermath as search parties are conducted, her mother dissolves with grief and, most of all, life goes on.

            It’s not a mystery film; unusually, it begins with the circumstances of Carolyn’s disappearance, plain as day. It is not interested in giving its viewers a puzzle to solve. Instead, we see how the impact of Carolyn’s loss spirals outward, and as her peers lives continue, fucked up as always. The film takes on an ensemble feel, with a special focus on Carolyn’s grieving mother and three of her peers, various degrees removed from her and Andy, the boy who left her for dead. Joanna, daughter of an addict mother, sells underwear to pervs and dreams of escape. Laurel, Andy’s cheerleader girlfriend, finds secret love with another girl. Charlotte, a budding actress and musician with dramatic style and Carolyn’s former bandmate, crushes on a football player and helps Joanna’s mother make dresses for the homecoming dance she’s too cool to attend. Joanna’s dad, a birthday party clown, is sleeping with Laurel’s mom, who’s faking a pregnancy. The girls deal with rivalries, young love, kisses both wanted and unwanted, unreliable parents, the failure of authority figures, ambition, fear. Knives and Skin sometimes strains to hold all of these storylines, but ultimately carries it off with grace.

The ever-stylish Charlotte

            Something very strange happened to me during two-thirds of this movie. For the first chunk, I intellectually recognized that Knives and Skin was an achievement, made with craft and style, but my heart wasn’t in it. With its stilted acting and bizarre visuals, it felt like a surreal, dissonant art film projected on a gallery wall. Then, somewhere around the one-hour mark, it grabbed me. The storylines started to have payoffs. The bizarre images – papier-mache crows, a melting ice cream cake, a glowing pair of glasses, a talking tiger t-shirt, a sequined mermaid dress worn over a t-shirt – exploded with significance and emotional import. Everyone gets their moment. Laurel gets sweet petty revenge on Andy, Charlotte dances in a frilly ballgown accessorized with her impeccable style, Joanna gets a cathartic shout from the school rooftop. Most of all, Carolyn’s mother finds Carolyn’s glasses and puts them on to see her daughter waving goodbye. I was destroyed.

            Knives and Skin is a deeply stylized film full of singing, theatrical exchanges, the disappearance and reappearance of key clues. Like a moody teenage girl, it puts up walls to accessibility, but ultimately these walls are just as rich with meaning than what they conceal. It seduced me into its technicolor world without me ever realizing, and I’m so glad I had the patience to keep watching and to sit with the strangeness. If that sounds like your bag, I hope you’ll give it a try.

Carolyn and her signature glasses 

Vibecheck: Bisexual lighting for days.

Scare Factor: More of a thriller / art film than a horror film, and more atmospheric and emotional than scary.

Pairs Well With: I’ve seen Donnie Darko and Twin Peaks comparisons, and they’re apt. The rooftop scene in particular put me in mind of a great non-horror film, Support the Girls, that also balances multiple storylines and great characters but does so within a much more realist lens.

But how gay is it?: One of the two successful romantic relationships in the film is between women, and it’s deeply sexy. And there’s plenty of other queer energy to go around in this film.

Girlfriend’s Corner: Ughhhhhh I wish I’d seen this movie. Please use the comments section below this post to tell Sara she has to watch it again with me. Only in unity can our voices be heard by those in power.