This is one strange movie. A sci-fi/horror movie, with Scarlet Johansson as the only recognizable star, it’s a slow, quiet movie set in Scotland, in which an alien (is she/it really female?) dressed in human skin seduces men with no family connections into a strange room with what looks like a pool of black mercury. They are submerged in the strange fluid and preserved, apparently so their skin can be used as a suit by other aliens.
This works for a while, except that she begins to experience some of the feelings of the humans whose skin she is using. She starts to have empathy, which gets in the way of her “harvests”. Who are these aliens, why are the “dressing” like humans? More questions than answers.
Johansson is excellent and quite courageous in this nameless role. There’s very little speech, lots of nudity (including Scarlett) and it’s almost a silent movie. What speech there is, is so heavy on Scottish dialect that you can only grab a word here and there, but it really doesn’t matter. The movie is carried by its surreal imagery and its literally and emotionally dark, somber mood. In that regard, it reminds me of that other excellent horror movie set in the dark, the moody Swedish “Let The Right One In” and it’s remade American twin, “Let Me In”. The movie makes you ask a lot more questions than ever get answered. My recommendation is qualified. It’s really interesting, not like other horror movies AT ALL, but it’s slow moving, and only implies a plot, rarely letting you in on where it’s going. Nevertheless, I guarantee that you have not seen another movie like this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io92j2qqEGk
