8 / 10
Under the Skin is one of the most uncompromising science fiction films of the 2010s and one of the most divisive. Jonathan Glazer directed. Walter Campbell co-wrote with Glazer, loosely adapting Michel Faber’s 2000 novel. Scarlett Johansson plays an unnamed alien woman who drives a white van through Scotland picking up unsuspecting men, who she then leads to a black void that consumes them. The film runs one hundred and eight minutes. The dialogue is minimal. Most of the men in the early sequences are non-actors recruited from Scottish public streets through hidden cameras. Some of them did not know they were in a film until production approached them afterward.
The film made approximately seven million dollars on a thirteen million dollar budget. It was a commercial disappointment that has become one of the most-respected art house science fiction films of its decade. The film polarizes audiences. Some viewers consider it a masterpiece. Others find it tedious and pretentious. Both responses are defensible. The film is what it is.
The Hidden Camera Sequences
The film’s most distinctive production choice was the use of hidden cameras to capture Scarlett Johansson’s character interacting with real people on Scottish streets. Johansson, made up to be less immediately recognizable as Scarlett Johansson, would approach men in her white van and ask for directions. The men did not know they were being filmed. If they were willing to chat, the camera continued. If they were not, the van moved on.
The technique produced footage that no scripted approach could have generated. The men’s reactions are genuine. Their conversational rhythms are uncalibrated. Their willingness to engage with an unfamiliar attractive woman in a van varies in ways that reveal something about how men respond to such situations. The film is partly an anthropological document about Scottish masculinity. The men were notified after filming and given the chance to remove their footage. Most consented.
For Writers
Unscripted footage of real people behaves differently from scripted dialogue between actors. Under the Skin captured Scottish men in their unguarded moments. The film could not have written the dialogue that emerged. The lesson is that some kinds of truth in fiction can only be obtained through methods that bend the rules of traditional narrative. The cost is ethical complexity. The benefit is texture no scripted approach can produce.
The Void
The alien’s victims are taken to a black void where they undress, walk forward into liquid, and are absorbed. The visual rendering of these sequences is the film’s strongest formal achievement. The void is pure black. The men appear to walk into a surface that should be solid but is not. They sink below the surface. The film shows their bodies floating in the liquid with the surface still intact above them. The choreography is staged so the audience cannot quite track the mechanics. The effect is genuinely uncanny.
One of the most-quoted sequences involves two men in the void who are floating in different stages of liquefaction. One of them touches the other’s hand. The other’s body breaks apart silently into floating organs and skin. The sequence is shot without sound effects or score. The audience watches without commentary. The horror is delivered without explanation.
For Writers
Silence can be more terrifying than sound when the visual content is sufficient. Under the Skin’s void sequences are mostly silent. The lack of musical cues forces the audience to engage with the images directly. The lesson is that audio cues tell the audience how to feel. Removing them forces the audience to construct their own emotional response. Silence is not the absence of sound design. Silence is a specific creative choice that produces specific effects.
Scarlett Johansson
Johansson’s performance is one of the most committed of her career. The role required her to play a being who is gradually developing human feeling without ever fully achieving it. The early scenes show the alien as efficient, predatory, and emotionally absent. The middle of the film shows the gradual onset of curiosity. The third act shows the alien beginning to feel emotions she does not know what to do with.
The performance is delivered largely through small physical adjustments. The alien’s body language changes as the film progresses. Her face holds expressions slightly longer. Her response to physical sensations starts to register. Johansson plays the transformation without underlining it. The audience either reads the change or does not. The film does not help. The performance is one of the most demanding character studies in 2010s science fiction.
For Writers
A character whose interior life is gradually emerging is one of the harder things to depict in fiction. Under the Skin tracks the alien’s emerging humanity through small physical changes rather than through dialogue or voice-over. The lesson is that change in a character does not require announcement. Show the small physical adjustments. The reader will read the interior change without being told it is happening. Underlining the transformation usually weakens it.
Craft Note
The hidden-camera Glasgow sequences are the film’s most distinctive craft. Jonathan Glazer’s use of unscripted public footage with Scarlett Johansson in disguise produced a specific docu-fiction texture that no other 2010s science fiction film attempted. The technique demonstrates that science fiction can borrow documentary methods to make the alien protagonist’s outsider perspective feel genuinely outside.
The Verdict
8/10. One of the most uncompromising science fiction films of the 2010s. The performance is one of Johansson’s best. The void sequences are unforgettable. The pace is glacial in ways that will lose impatient viewers. The film knows what it is and does not apologize for it. Watch it knowing what kind of film you are signing up for.
FAQ
Is it really that slow?
Yes. The pace is deliberately patient. Long takes. Minimal dialogue. Quiet observation. Viewers who prefer faster cinema will struggle.
Did the hidden camera method really work?
Yes. Many of the men in the early sequences did not know they were being filmed. They were approached afterward and asked for consent. Most agreed to remain in the film.
How does it compare to the novel?
The novel is significantly more explicit about the alien’s mission and biology. The film cuts most of the explanation in favor of pure observation. Both works are interesting in their own ways.
Is the third act really tragic?
Yes. The alien’s gradual emerging humanity does not save her. The ending is bleak. The film does not soften it.
Who is Jonathan Glazer?
British director. Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004), Under the Skin (2013), The Zone of Interest (2023). His films are infrequent and idiosyncratic. Each one is a significant artistic event.
How is the Mica Levi score?
One of the strongest individual elements of the production. Levi’s atonal string-based score establishes the film’s specific unease.
Should I watch this?
Yes, if you can commit to the pace. No, if you want conventional science fiction.