Not too long ago, Jorge, his wife Sarah, and I talked about Skinamarink on Podferatu. We thought it’d be fun to bring Sarah on as a guest because the movie terrified if not outright traumatized her. It bored Jorge out of his mind and irritated me no end. It was a fun discussion, but for the most part, the movie didn’t really work for me.

I made the observation that it was a little overlong and likely didn’t need that much run time. I’ve seen several YouTubers claim that Skinamarink pays off “if you have the patience for it” (for more on this, check out Daniel Profeta’s review, “The Lingering Terror Of Liminal Spaces”). I don’t, however, particularly like or buy that argument. I’m not sold on the idea that the fault lies with my patience level but rather with Ball overplaying his “experimental horror” hand.

In any case, I argued that it may well be more effective as a short film rather than a feature, a statement based partly on my own opinion and observations (nor am I the only one. See Cody Leach’s review). I say “partly” because, while prepping for the episode, I came across a couple mentions of Kyle Edward Ball’s short film Heck which is considered to be kind of a proof of concept for Skinamarink. I finally got around to watching it, and it turns out I was right.

To be fair, Skinamarink isn’t completely or only a feature length treatment of Heck. There are some significant differences. There is no dialogue from the dad relating the boy sleepwalking or hitting his head in a fall down the stairs. In fact, there’s no dad at all in Heck. There’s no sister either. There’s still the boy in the house, and his mother is either nowhere to be found or is for whatever reason nonresponsive. Either one of those scenarios is a cause for dread.

Admittedly, I went into Heck fully expecting it to be at least marginally more effective than Skinamarink. Fact is it’s significantly more effective. There are still points at which its feet drag a bit, and even in the 28-minute run time, I might have checked how much there was left a time or two. But it held my attention far more successfully and maintained a higher level of tension.

One reason for this is, at least to me, it was a little more nightmarish given a somewhat quicker pace. One of the problems I have with the feature is that, at least in my nightmares, things escalate far more quickly and don’t let me off the hook until I wake up sweating and sometimes with a good case of the shakes. Heck was able to capitalize on that, especially with the muffled, distorted sound. The boy calling “Mom” as the short progresses becomes demonic sounding.

And because Heck moves faster, the dream logic works better. Again, in my dreams anyway, things shift, change, distort, appear, disappear at quite a clip. On the other hand, one disadvantage Heck suffers from is that you can’t see the creepy old cartoons as well. Those things are freaky and add some serious menace in Skinamarink.

Finally, there are, of course, theories for the feature. One of my faves is the coma theory, that all of this is the product of the boy who is lying in a coma, presumably after that fall and blow to the head. This gains credibility with the “572 Days” caption.

But this coma theory may hold up in Heck as well but for a different reason. At one point the boy tells his mother “I’m sorry I got cancer,” and adds that he’s better now. For reasons I can’t explain, this makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I mean, A) what a fuckin’ gut punch. B) this could therefore be from a terminal and now comatose kid’s brain. It might also explain why time is measured in “sleeps” instead of days, ending at 18694 sleeps.

How much time, then, is between sleeps? I don’t think there’s a set time or a definite answer. He may sleep for a couple hours, a day, all night, a few minutes, any or all of those. And if he’s in a coma, wakefulness may be periods of brain activity when all this weirdness takes place. I have no answers. I didn’t have any for the feature either. But this time, that unsettles me a bit.

SKULLS  2.5