The book is awesome. There is a lot more going on but I think they captured the essence of it. I enjoyed the movie. Everyone I know thought it was boring.

I wouldn't call it boring at all... It's too odd for that to be the case...

I didn't know it was baed on a book... I'm glad they avoided narration and exposition, which is a risk with adaptations...

It as boring due to lack of action and dialog, I get bored at looking on nothing happening waiting for something to.

My guess is that they rly wanted to touch on how an alien of folklore being would think and feel.

What took me out is how she suddenly changes her personality once she starts flirting on a prey. How is she able to be that talkative when she's on it, while she is so inert when not. If she was learning how it is to be human and that was changing her, why didn't she at least tried to talk?

It's like she was being controlled by something else and only it was able to make she has that personality. But if so, this controller was never shown, which is lame if that's the case.

It's definitely a thinking movie rather than an action flick. I can see why action/scifi fans would be bored or even feel suckered by a roller-coaster premise (hot naked alien chick seduces & kills men!). But I think the tone is set pretty early that this isn't that kind of flick, so you have plenty of time to demand your money back in the first 20 mins.

About the flirting and changing of personality, the way I see it is that she's like a hunter using a mating call to lure her prey. The same way a duck hunter would use a "flirty" mating call to trap ducks, Scarlett's character is just mechanically flirting with her prey because she knows what works: the coquettish banter, showing some leg, a smile at the right moment. But she doesn't feel any of it; it's just for show as we learn when she snares them and calmly walks away the way a duck hunter would gather up the corpse without any feeling.

It's only later, when she meets the disfigured man who doesn't behave the way normal drooling men behave, that she realizes that these "animals" actually have souls. This awakening is handled very subtly, without any words or dramatic monologues, but if you're paying attention to her face & body language in the scenes following her encounter with the disfigured man, you can read how her mind is thinking on a very different level, and she is evolving emotionally. The transformation is complete when she soon finds herself in the position of a hunted animal.

Yeah I agree, she lets him go alive.

What I mean is that, now that she's feeling humans shouldn't be killed, I'd expect her to at least try to interact emotionally, not remain inert.

I see that she seems to not understand emotions and "not care" to talk, but she's able to, and at least knows its effect. I'd expect her to turn into a 3rd personality, where she'd be still unable to feel, but would try to, and use her skills now trying to feel the emotion. That as as result of her change of vision regarding humans.

I wonder how the rape scene fits on that. Maybe it was meant to show her that humans aren't at all so good? Maybe she regretted giving up on hunting them? Maybe she'd turn back if she could. I mean, she's not strong and is unable to fight, in the whole movie she was seducing them and bringing them to that place, she'd be unable to do it if somebody refused.

@HikariWS said:

I wonder how the rape scene fits on that. Maybe it was meant to show her that humans aren't at all so good? Maybe she regretted giving up on hunting them? Maybe she'd turn back if she could. I mean, she's not strong and is unable to fight, in the whole movie she was seducing them and bringing them to that place, she'd be unable to do it if somebody refused.

Yea that was a big surprise, and I also wondered why she was suddenly afraid of the rapist. In earlier scenes she had no fear, almost like she figured she could overpower them if she had to, but toward the end she seems helpless. Maybe that's because she just had her whole world turned upside down and she couldn't think straight? Or maybe like you said, all along she was weaker than her prey, but it never occurred to her that they would fight back and hurt her. Again like the duck hunter analogy, if a duck suddenly attacked a hunter, the hunter would probably be so surprised he'd run screaming like a little baby. It's the (over)confidence of being a predator that makes them act tough.

Great question about whether she regretted showing the disfigured guy mercy. The final guy was so violent & sick that it must've dawned on her that some humans suck and deserve to die. I dunno, maybe the movie throws that at us just to remind us that there's no easy answer. It's not like she suddenly learns compassion and flies away on her happy spaceship. It's more like she wakes up to reality and it's not pretty.

I like stories that don't give us all explanations and I admire stories that leave open spaces to guess, but I don't like when that's abused. There's too much not explained.

Was she just mimicing when she was seducing? Was she unable to understand the feelings related? But if so, shouldn't she start at least realizing them? As I said, the impression I had while watching was that something would remotely command her into starting to seduce, as a leader who would choose the prey and order her to bring him. So, in this case she'd not even guess that seducing skills would be used for other kinds of interactions.

I also understood that when she got to that place she was just liring them and her leader would feed from their body and leave only the skin. I had read that skins would be used by other aliens, but it seems that skins are then destroyed or at least screwed up.

Another part I didn't like is when the guy has sex with her and she gets scared. But later without the skin she has breasts, so they aren't much different than us. If they are mammals, shouldn't they have uterus and placenta too?

@HikariWS said:

Another part I didn't like is when the guy has sex with her and she gets scared. But later without the skin she has breasts, so they aren't much different than us. If they are mammals, shouldn't they have uterus and placenta too?

Oh I totally interpreted that whole scene in a different way. To me she didn't get scared about being violated, but what spooked her is that she realized she had just been penetrated so her disguise was ripped open. Notice how she immediately sits up, grabs a light and inspects herself down there without emotion.

I hadn't thought of the controller angle til you mentioned it, but now that I think about it there was that one scene with the motorcycle alien where she seemed to be taking orders or instructions through telepathy. So maybe yea she wasn't really in control during the seductions. Maybe that control was broken when she decided to spare the disfigured guy and she ran away... sorta like breaking the connection with her controller. I dunno, a lot of this might be a stretch but I think it's kinda cool that they left so many questions unanswered but with just enough clues that we can build our own theories.

yeah, I don't like when so many info is ambiguous :/

Indeed it might be that she was scared of the skin being ripped, but I understood that she didn't know about sex and got indeed scared when she felt it. That would mean she has no clue about any kind of emotional relation. In any way, she hurried to inspect with the light, so she wasn't expecting it to happen. Indeed it makes more sense that she was inspecting the skin than just looking where he put it.

I don't mean a controller in the sense she wasn't under control of her acts. I mean that the leader would choose a prey, and then she'd act seductive to bring him. I remember a scene that the guy was coming from behind her POV and all of a sudden she changed her behavior and called him, it seems like the leader was looking on the man before it and she was notified and reacted immediately.

I'm sure director's idea wasn't that she lost any telepatic connection and that led her to change, I believe the way the disfigured guy reacted when being treated nicely is what made her figure that human lives have value.

@Renovatio said:

Half decent movie...

I really thought the reality TV style in-car footage took me out of the movie... I don't know if they could have done it in a non-TV way, but that still gave the effect of authenticity that they seem to have wanted.

Otherwise, it was interesting that they took the subjective approach to tell the story from Johansson's character's point of view... I liked the lack of exposition and the quietness of it...

Although reading some of the critics I don't know what they're on about... it's not that complex... If anything, it's a very small and slight movie... Not "mind blowing" by any means...

Worth checking out for Sci-Fi fans for sure... But not the most cinematic of experiences...

I remember being a little taken aback (in a bad way) when I first saw the film but after a second viewing I grew to like it. Definitely worth a peek.

Under the Skin (2014) - 7 outta 10 stars