Skinamarink (2022) - Kyle Edward Ball.

A number of mostly unseen, increasingly malign entities torment a Canadian family in unconventionally creepy paranormal chiller Skinamarink. I don't feel it is altogether just likening this inventive film to Poltergeist, if the sporadic subtitles herein were in Czech, this viewer might well regard Skinamarink as a lost, recently restored experimental Eastern block gem from the early 70s! The two young children's escalating distress is eerily revealed with clever editing, menacingly disembodied sounds, oppressive shadows, and stylised, frequently disorientating camera angles. One of the more darkly engrossing mood pieces I have seen, hallucinatory and chillingly off-beat, Skinamarink is an uncommonly absorbing experience. On an entirely more personal level, I found Skinamarink to be oddly soothing, as within a very short time I became absolutely enveloped within this reality warped, fuzzily alien realm of haunting high strangeness. Any example of genre cinema that strays so determinedly from cliche will, quite naturally, find its detractors, as the pleasures of music and film are entirely subjective, so Skinamarink's appeal shall no doubt remain equally contentious.