Scarlett Johansson was naked in this movie? I didn't remember. Enjoy our breakdown of Jonathan Glazer's 2013 UNDER THE SKIN!
Scarlett Johansson is naked for about 60% of this movie and neither one of us even remembered. What we did remember was when her character lured an unsuspecting man into her void-like spacecraft and allowed him to sink into black goop while sporting a massive erection. It doesn't just happen once, it happens TWICE! And a third time, although slightly differently. That's the power of this one folks!
Join us in talking about the trail blazer himself Jonathan Glazer, and his enigmatic, dramatic, arthouse, erotic sci-fi film.
Ryan: If you hear any noise on the podcast, it is raining very heavily outside.
Laura: Yeah, but we got a job to do.
Ryan: Yeah, we got shit to get on with. We need to go drinking after this.
Laura: We sure do.
Laura: Hello there. Welcome to on the BiTTE the podcast that uncovers full frontal male nudity in cinema. My name is Laura and I am joined by my co host, Ryan. Hello, Ryan. Welcome. I'm thrilled. I'm truly, deep down to my core, thrilled to be talking about the 2013 Sci-Fi film under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson and directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Ryan: Yes. The director, screenwriter, music video filmmaker, uh, Jonathan Glazer.
Laura: What a list.
Ryan: Glazer, blazer, betrayal. Glazer.
Laura: The trail. Glazer.
Ryan: Yeah, I like Jonathan Glazer. Quite a fair amount. I kind of liking him more to the I guess, like one of the old guard of music video makers, which you don't really have anymore, let's say, like your Mark Roman X, your Spike Jones, um, your Michel Gondry's, your Chris Cunningham's. That sort of old guard.
Laura: I had those DVDs.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I still have those DVDs. Um, at least his DVD didn't go the way of the Chris Cunningham DVD, which was like, at least it felt comprehensive and it had information in it. The Chris Cunningham DVD, I feel like, is a crime because it actually shows you other music videos that could have been included in it. And I've seen far more of his work that he's done that is not included on that DVD.
Laura: Oh, boy.
Ryan: It's only a single side as well. Cheap. Cheap.
Laura: Cheap, indeed.
Ryan: Yeah. The spike. Jones and Michel Gondry ones are double sided. You remember when DVDs used to be double sided?
Laura: Yeah. Or when they would have one side that would be full screen and then the other side would be widescreen.
Ryan: Uh, I mean, by full screen, you mean, like, it fit four three on a big TV. Yes. Because no one liked the black bars on the top and the bottom.
Laura: Yeah. When people would come into the video store and they'd say, part of this movie is cut off. And I said, you're doing it wrong.
Ryan: Yeah. It's old people, though. Old people don't understand. Yeah, they don't understand.
Laura: Oh, well.
Ryan: But anyway, yeah.
Ryan: Um, so this is the third feature film from Jonathan Glaser. And before then, he'd made Sexy Beast in 2000 and birth in 2004.
Laura: You love sexy Beast.
Ryan: Sexy Beast is so fucking good. It's a really good example of just a well put together, well crafted script and a good story given and put to the hands of a very visual, stylistic, uh, filmmaker. I think that's something that just he brings a lot of that kind of, uh, stylistic edge to, uh, his work, which I quite admire.
Laura: I wish there was a dick in that movie because I would like to talk about it. Yeah, it's very fun.
Ryan: Well, I mean, I would like because if we talk about, like I say, I talk about the old guard. Right. Um, each one of their own first feature films are very good examples of how they brought their creativity from the music video medium into feature filmmaking and short filmmaking. Uh, more story driven stuff, let's say. Um, but yeah. I mean, if anyone's familiar, jonathan Glaser did music videos for Massive, uh, Attack Blur, uh, Jameraquai Virtual Insanity.
Laura: That was his.
Ryan: That was his. It's a very clever there's some really good illustrations in the booklet that came in that DVD about how they made that set.
Laura: I love that video.
Ryan: And it's pretty much what you thought it was. It's just four walls with casters put on the bottom of the wall so they could wheel it around.
Laura: I love that.
Ryan: And it's just lighting cables and stuff, like stuck into the top of, uh, the moving set. Uh, he also did videos for Radiohead, that band and uncle.
Laura: What's uncle? Uncle's kind of a man from uncle.
Ryan: No. Uncle.
Laura: Army hammer.
Ryan: No, Uncle's kind of like a drumming bass dance artist.
Laura: Okay.
Ryan: Very kind of dark tone sort of music. I like uncle. Um, but yeah, no, he's illustrious. Career in advertising as well. He makes more adverts now than he does music. Uh, videos and things.
Laura: Is this is under the Skin, the most recent film that he's made in 2013.
Ryan: Yes. He's got a film in the works, another A 24 joint. Um oh, yeah. Which it doesn't look interesting to me. What is it about Nazis and Auschfits? So I'm like, I'm not really into that.
Laura: But with A 24, does that mean there's going to be quite a bit of neon?
Ryan: No, that doesn't make any sense.
Laura: A 24 movies have a lot of.
Ryan: I thought you were trying to make some sort of like, joke comparison to the other company, which is called Neon, which I feel makes a lot of Neon films releases better films.
Laura: Yeah. They have their own thing going.
Ryan: Uh, this was back like them 2013 is back when A 24 we didn't take notice of it. It wasn't until film fanboys picked up A 24 and effectively turned it into what it was. That's why you have like its screenings. You've got like 20 something year olds. When the A 24 logo comes up, they start clapping.
Laura: Does that happen?
Ryan: Yeah. I heard someone's like, shut the fuck up. No, they have released some really good stuff. Uh, I think Uncut Gems is obviously probably one of my favorite things that they've put out of late.
Laura: But first reformed.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, they've got horrible stigma attached to them, though. Which kind of green knight? They also did that movie Lamb as well. Yeah. And I mean, at the end of the day, they're not making the movies effect essentially they're releasing them. Yes. Um, but they do have this kind of horrible pretentious artistic stigma to them. And to be fair, under the skin is no different from the stuff that we're accustomed to seeing from them now.
Laura: No, I still like it. I don't care if it's pretentious.
Ryan: Oh, no. I love under the skin. Now, let's say ten years ago, when I did see the movie for the first time, what's, 2022? Near about ten years. Right. Um, I was very confused. I didn't know what to kind of rate this. Everyone around me loved it, and they enjoyed it, but it wasn't until the second view this is only the second time I've seen this film in its entirety.
Laura: Yeah, same. I don't know, I think the first time that I rated this, I rated it three out of five, and I liked it, but I maybe felt the same way, because it does have a lot of I don't know, just kind of quiet driving moments and scenic moments, and I'm wondering where this is going.
Laura: Maybe this is a good time for me to tell you the synopsis of this film.
Ryan: Yes, please.
Laura: A seductive alien prowls the streets of Glasgow in search of prey, unsuspecting men who fall under her.
Ryan: Makes that makes sense. There's a lovely amount of ambiguity about the whole thing. There is no sense of her of us knowing that she's an alien until effectively, it is not put in concrete until the very, very end of the movie.
Laura: True.
Ryan: But you can obviously see that when she's leading men into this black void, and then they sink into nothingness. Obviously, that place doesn't exist in a derelict house in Glasgow, or at least I'm not aware of it. Certainly I felt that way living at my mum's. But at the same time, let's be real here. There is no dark void other than the one that rests in our A.
Ryan: Like it's a joke, I could probably try and extend out a fair amount, and I can say what I want about Scotland. I'm from there. And, uh, I don't know, I just thought it'd be funnier to kind of keep out. I, uh, love Scotland, by the way.
Laura: He does.
Ryan: Just so we're aware. Yeah, Scotland the, um know, and I do like that this film is set there.
Laura: Absolutely.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: I don't understand, and we were talking about this earlier, why she has an English accent and not a Scots accent. But then I think the Scots accent is near impossible for anyone who's not Scottish to do.
Ryan: And it's probably well, certainly a thick, uh, sure.
Laura: That's for sure.
Ryan: Because certainly that's even something that took a little bit of getting used to when I first moved there, when I was a youngster.
Laura: Yeah, and you lived an hour away.
Ryan: Yeah. But the dialect is like the further west you get. Um, in Scotland. Let's say I'm originally from Edinburgh. The further west in Scotland you get, the thicker the axiom gets. And even the further north the further north it gets, the higher it tends to get. As well, and ends up turns into something completely different, something's a bit horrible. But I've always quite enjoyed the thick glaswegian accent. Uh, it's always been a dialect that I've always felt was quite warm and welcoming.
Laura: I agree. It's weirdly comforting, yes. And even when I traveled there for the first time, and I had a couple of friends in the cab, we were getting to our hostel that we stayed at and I'm just talking to the guy driving the cab. My friends had no clue what he was saying, but for some reason I was just able to tune into this guy and I just got it. I didn't catch everything he said, but m it just seemed he was super friendly and I was like, this is pretty good.
Ryan: Yeah. No, I mean, end of the day, it's a sort of accent that you're like uh, he's really nice to me, but then it can also turn on a dime where you're like, he's going to fucking stab me. I feel like, uh, that's the thing. But that's a Scottish accent in general, is that it can kind of be very switchable that way. But uh, let's put in short, no. I like the fact that under the Skin is set in Glasgow. It gives it a certain character. And I remember when this film was being shot, there was quite a lot of hubbub of the fact that they're shooting a movie in glasgow with scarlett johansson, which was obviously quite a big deal at the, uh, like I'll put this this way. I've got a relative amount of skepticism, uh, about the Scottish film industry having grown up in it and worked in it and stuff like that. So by the time you hear, oh, Jonathan Glazer's making his third film in Scotland, you're like, right, okay, what the fuck's he going to do? And then eventually, when you do see it I was a little bit disappointed on the first viewing, I feel, just because of how he was using the location. But also to me, it felt like it wasn't drawing out, uh, anything that we hadn't already seen in Scottish cinema in general. Certainly not from the independent crowd. Because I've always found that the industry itself has been very kind of niche. Only a handful of people get in, and they only let so many people in, um, based on the kind of quality thing, how they feel like, how do we want to represent our country in cinema? And I feel like it's always kind of deviated into the same sort of dreary, grim, kind, uh, of urbanite sort of stories that they tend to tell. So because of that, I feel like the length and breadth of Scottish talent just wasn't being represented at the time. So kind of feel like a lot of my bias kind of comes from that.
Laura: Well, at least they expand out, at least in the landscape of this film, because they do go north into the Highlands. So you do get to see a lot of that really gorgeous, the cityscape of Glasgow.
Ryan: They do. I will say, though, it does come across like it's incredibly volatile, and I feel like it kind of works a lot for the film in general, but also, it does still come across quite dreary. Um, it doesn't have a romanticism about it, certainly not in the way that I feel like maybe the filmmakers are wanting to get out of the landscape, but it's a formidable landscape, certainly, in the sense of it's grandeur. It's very pretty. Like, I'm not going to say that it's not, but at the same time, it's fierce. Um, and I do like what they've done in the film, but I don't feel like it's any different from, say, like, quite a lot of other things that we've seen, or at least I've seen kind of over the prevailing years in Scottish film.
Laura: How did you feel about the camera work in the film? Because I know that it's different the way that they utilize the cameras and the way that they kind of wanted to show at least the film through the female's eyes, because she doesn't have a name.
Ryan: No.
Laura: So how they kind of utilize the camera work in terms of being able to show what they wanted to show and how they did it.
Ryan: It'S kind.
Laura: Of a documentary style.
Ryan: So here's the thing, and I don't want to come across as a dullard as if it's like what I'm seeing in the film and what they're trying to get across to me is something that I don't understand. I find issues with the value of the way that they've done it. Um, so effectively, what they do, and with a lot of the stuff where she's traveling around in the van and stuff, they've they've fitted the van out with, like ten or eleven cameras, like hidden cameras, like surveillance cameras, to effectively catch every moment from every angle. So it was more a case of that the action was being filmed, as opposed to the filmmakers were filming actions taking place and then repeating the same actions take for take for take. So it was more a case of spur the moment, catch it in this and there's know, there's little bits like Jonathan kind of talks in the making of on the Blu ray that we watched, where it was like, they would have one main shot. And if a light happened to glance across Scarlett's face the same light would be passing across her on a different setup so they were able to kind of cut between them and stuff. So it felt like this incongruous moment, like all these things that were happening were all kind of happening in real time. And there's a lovely romantic idea behind that, and it's certainly something that draws me in a little bit. Certainly as a fan of independent cinema in general, like, Casavettes and things. I don't know if it really adds the weight that they think it does.
Laura: Okay. Yeah. I mean, it is interesting to me. I didn't realize how they had filmed this movie. For the most part, just the fact that they decided to have Scarlett Johansson drive around Scotland in a van full of hidden cameras just trying to pick up know. And they thought, how are we going to make it? So that these men that know as the character trying to pick up on the street to take back to her black void. Um, but all they did was put a wig on her and give her an English accent. But it worked. Most people just couldn't fathom, oh, I'm talking to Scarlett Johansson in a white, unmarked van on the side of the road.
Ryan: Yeah, I would also my hometown. Yeah. I mean, I would also point out as well that there's a combination between the filmmakers obviously wanting to capture certain things. So they're putting Scarlett in situations where she's going to meet and she's going to talk to people. And then she's going to be put in situations where people are going to be attracted to her, to talk to her. And then she obviously interacts with her.
Laura: She's a babe.
Ryan: There's a lot of kind of interim moments in certainly some of these scenes. And I kind of feel like they talk a lot about how difficult it was to edit this stuff together because you do kind of feel like it does feel a little bit choppier than it probably needs to be, certainly in that club scene. That club scene I have quite a few issues with other than the times where it's like they're filming things that I know they've obviously set up. But obviously they've got a, uh, club scene and everything's kind of very choppy. And you're trying to capture these moments of realism and things. And I'm like it happens a little bit too quickly for my taste. But personally, I feel like they're partly successful in how they're doing. I just wish that there was more of her interactions with the general public, effectively creating this illusion that she's this person that she's not.
Laura: I love the moments when she's in the van where she's picking up guys off the street, like the Celtics van that comes up off the street, um, that we'll talk about in a second. But all of these men and all these interactions because you see her just driving, but this blank face that she somehow is able to do in every scene. She just has this blank face when she's driving around. And then as soon as she starts to, she turns on so she turns on this alien personality and this charm to try and lure these men into her van. And it's kind of captivating to me. I find it really interesting that most of the movie doesn't say anything at all. And then when she does. She's incredibly charming and very flirtatious. I liked that a lot.
Ryan: Yeah, I feel like that stuff is what kind of differentiates this from, say, uh, a, uh, more straight telling ah. Or a straightly told film where those moments are set up, they're written, they're rehearsed, they're put into practice, and then they're set up and they're filmed. Um, that's not to say that this film is not full of that stuff anyway.
Laura: Right, yeah. No, you have the scenes that are set up because I think a lot of the people that she talked to on the street were obviously real folks. But then some of those folks they hired on to take off their clothes, they didn't dunk into black goo.
Ryan: Yes. They didn't just take these people and go like, right, okay, well, now that you've interacted with Scarlett, we unfortunately have to dunk you into black goo, just so you're aware.
Laura: I'm sure it was consensual black goo dumpage.
Ryan: Yes. And also, you need to have a boner as you go into the black goop.
Laura: Hey, two out of three dicks in this movie are erect.
Ryan: They are.
Laura: That is super rare.
Ryan: Mhm.
Laura: It is incredibly rare.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: What a treat.
Ryan: Um, well, here's the thing. There's something about the film that if you take out, like the head and camera stuff and things like that, let's just say it was played straight. There's the tone, there's the look, there's the music, there's the unsettling nature about the whole thing. There's the ambiguity about the whole thing. There's this sense of travel. There's this urbanite dereliction that we're seeing in Scotland, and to be fair, that's what it looks like. And then, uh, there's obviously this expansion into the world ahead. Like, we see the beach and we'll talk about that beach scene, and then obviously, there's the woods, and there's the rural sides of stuff there. So even know, you take the hidden camera stuff out, uh, and it's just Scarlett Johansson being filmed in a van and stuff. The film is still unique, in my opinion, because stylistically, there's such a menace and there's such a darkness to the whole thing that I kind of feel like it elevates itself anyway. Even if I feel like some of those hidden camera choices are a little bit hit and miss, in my opinion.
Laura: Right. And I think I agree with you that it definitely could have been done differently. I don't know if it was necessarily necessary to have it shot this kind of documentary style hidden camera way but I think that the music, in a way is kind of it amplifies what we're seeing and it helps kind of describe what's going on because the images that we're seeing are this kind of passionless outside observer to the whole situation. So the camera is not showing us anything, but the music is telling us everything.
Ryan: Yes, the music and the sound is integral in this film. Even the large swathes of the film that appear to be completely silent.
Laura: Yeah. Um, it's heavy.
Ryan: It's very dense is what I would say.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And it's something I really, really like about this film. And I will say it's something I've done in my own films because it's incredibly unsettling. This kind of mixture of tones and screeches and just sound effects that just kind of just kind of elevate it. Just give it this kind of creepy nature.
Ryan: Because you're so in the dark, which obviously is probably a little bit of a metaphor, but you're so in the dark about what's going on and how it is. Certainly when the film opens, you're not even sure what's going on. It's like a white dot and expands out. And you then realize, oh, it's the creation of a human eye.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Very strange. It's a very artistic picture, I guess, if you're not really into art house stuff, because it's definitely like Pinnacle fucking modern day, like art house. Maybe a little bit pretentious, but like art house, arty cinema. Um m. You're kind of delved into this thing without really knowing what's going on. Yeah.
Laura: No, and I think about that because you know that she's an alien, right. Especially the second time you've seen the film. But it says it in the description. But I can't remember the first time I saw it, if I knew what I was getting into.
Ryan: Well, certainly there's a white space as well where she's because there's a guy on a bike. Here's another thing. There's a guy on a bike, they call him a bad man who's just riding around, like cleaning up after her. So, uh, he's like a cleaner. He's just like cleaning up cleaning up her messes, effectively. And he stops off on the side of a road in the night. And there's a white van there. And uh, he just picks a body up, uh, from some ditch and just sticks in the back of the van. And she undresses it and dresses up as this woman steals this corpse's clothes.
Laura: I don't even know if she is a corpse, actually, because there's or if she's stunned or drugged. Because there's that moment where she gets scarlett Johansson gets all of this poor woman's clothes on. The woman is just laying there naked in this white space. And then you get a close up of her face and just a tear rolls down her face and it's terrifying.
Ryan: Yes. That's kind of more to kind of clue you in into what you're in store for. I highly recommend watching the film from start to finish. It's very much an experience.
Laura: Don't watch it from finish to start. That'd be really weird.
Ryan: No, it's not irreversible. Although you could technically do it with that one. But the whole premise is that she's picking up men and she goes and then we're going to talk about the first victim because that leads into our first dick moment.
Laura: It sure does.
Laura: So our female is in the van and it's seemingly right after a Celtics game. Right. There's people all over the street.
Ryan: Well she's going around Govin and Ibrox and stuff like that earlier on, uh, before then. But the guy's wearing Celtic colors when he gets into the van.
Laura: Yes. And flirting, flirting away.
Ryan: Flirty glass. Ouija.
Laura: And I don't remember where she takes him. Do you remember where she takes him?
Ryan: What do you mean?
Laura: Because he ends up in the black void.
Ryan: Oh. So they go to the derelict house which is the location of the void.
Laura: It's the same place every time.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Okay, well that's fair because it's the same place.
Ryan: There's a little house and there's high rises just near it because that's where the biker I think the biker sets up the bad man. Sorry. The biker sets up the void in that house.
Laura: Okay.
Ryan: Because that's where the van ends. Uh, up. That's at the very beginning of the movie, basically.
Laura: Okay, so yeah, she takes him back to the black void in that house and she's coaxing him in. Right. So she's starting to undress little by little, she's taking off her clothes. He's doing the same thing but a little bit faster than her.
Ryan: Yeah. Well, you're going to see a pattern in each of these moments because this happens with every single one.
Laura: Yeah. Sometimes she takes off more clothes.
Ryan: Mhm.
Laura: Sometimes she takes off less.
Ryan: They do these things without ever questioning. Wait, hold on. Where's the light switch? Why is this seem endless? Why have you got a mirrored floor?
Laura: That doesn't surprise me. Because it's a man all he's looking at. He's got laser focused eyes and he's thinking about Scarlett Johansson getting naked. He's about to have sex. You don't think about those type of things.
Ryan: Yeah, but m peripheral.
Laura: Well, here's sense.
Ryan: Here's the thing. I might have an immediate boner, but I'm not totally unaware of my surroundings to the point where I'm just like, wait, hold on, this is a little bit weird.
Laura: No blood to your brain. It's all in that boner.
Ryan: We talked about this before and I was like, you're going to walk into a room covered in like black bin bags and it's like, oh no, um, I'm dead now. This is my end.
Laura: They might think I'm about to die, but then there's still that one glimmer of hope in the back of their head thinking, but I might get laid.
Ryan: I think you have so little faith in Scottish men that I have very.
Laura: Little faith in all men.
Ryan: It's because it's set in Scotland. Maybe I just take back what I said about it being set in Scotland. It's just making Scottish men look predatory.
Laura: No, it's not predatory. She's the predator. I don't find them to be making.
Ryan: Her like they're fucking stupid. And he's just like, oh well, yeah.
Laura: It'S a boner dumb.
Ryan: Boner dumb.
Ryan: I do like that. I like it because it's not just this one. There's a later one as well. They immediately take off their pants and they've got a boner. It's go time.
Laura: Yeah, it's all go all the time. No problems here.
Ryan: Straight in knee kissing.
Laura: There you go.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: There you go. I love it.
Ryan: Yeah, I love that bit, though, because I think well, it was the thing I said before we watched the movie is just like, poor boy's got a stoner. And then he just sinks into nothingness.
Laura: Yeah. Uh, because you don't see that very often. You don't see erections in films. And I think this is super interesting.
Ryan: And you don't see it very quickly. You see it's relatively quite brief.
Laura: No, because as soon as it kind of does, that pan down from his head down to his chest. And when it gets down to his.
Ryan: Tilt, it tilts down. No, you're doing there's a meme about that. Uh, where it's like if anyone tries to describe camera moves, there's the filmmaker who has all of the camera moves memorized and things. And then everyone else just calls it a pan.
Laura: Yeah, just call me pewter pan, because I don't know what I'm talking about.
Ryan: It pans up, tilt.
Laura: Laugh at me all you want. I don't know. I have no shame. But it goes down. I'll just say that to his groin. And so as soon as it gets there and, uh, you see that he has an it's. He has already halfway sunken down into the black goo, basically up to his crotch. And he doesn't seem to notice. He's still laser focused on Scarlett Johansson the entire time.
Ryan: Yeah, well, that's the thing about it. It's like, no quicker is he there, and he gets on that spot, and then we see his head just like, go under the goop. Um, it's haunting.
Laura: It is horrible.
Ryan: It is haunting. Um, but it's something like I love that bit. I mean, that's not even the only bit where that happens there's. The second time that happens, it almost happens exactly the same way, but it goes a lot further. Yeah.
Laura: Um, it's a very scary thing. And I think, uh, it's interesting how they put it all together as well, because who was it? Now I feel like I'm going to mess up the name of the crew. The guy like the prop master, the prop designer, special effects.
Ryan: I mean, uh, production designer. Probably would have been the production designer.
Laura: So the production designer said that he had just that black liquid in the floor. And then he had a bladder inside that kind of sucked up the liquid so it wouldn't spill all over the floor when they got in.
Ryan: The liquid stays at the exact same level, even though there's mass that moves the water so that it would overflow.
Laura: Right.
Ryan: Because obviously, the two items, they can't occupy the same amount of space without having to evacuate the space. So either way, that's why they. Created that bladder so that it just looks deftly smooth as he's going into it. Um, yeah, it's just a platform that just sinks into the floor.
Laura: So neat.
Ryan: Very clever. Very clever.
Ryan: Because a lot of the stuff that's in this movie is practical effects.
Laura: 20 minutes and 50 seconds clocks in our first penis scene in this film.
Ryan: Cool.
Laura: You know what I also really like so there's a professor at Arizona State University. His name is Peter Layman. I love him. I have all of his books. And I've talked about this before. But he typically categorizes penises and films. And there's like three categories. He has so phallic masculinity so that's the dick can do no wrong. It's like big and insane, uh, and strong. And then you've got comic penises, which are the butt of the joke. Like, look how small your penis is.
Ryan: Yeah. Or they're floppy.
Laura: Yeah. And then you have the M melodramatic penises, where they're there for shock value. So these are just real men. Most of them aren't even actors. They're put into this alien scenario. No prosthetics. There's not even drama, necessarily. But it's just this horrible situation where they're vulnerable, but they don't even really realize it until it's way too late.
Ryan: I mean, they do a good job.
Laura: They get a fucking I just of course, there's the part of me that's like, how did that come about? How was that?
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. It's like Jonathan, uh, takes on one side and be like, you know what? It'll look a little bit more authentic if you had a boner.
Laura: The glaze is all about authenticity.
Ryan: Yeah. Trail glazer.
Laura: Trail glazer.
Ryan: Yeah. Um, so, yeah, there's that scene. And immediately what follows is, uh, the most horrific scene in the entire film.
Laura: The beach scene.
Ryan: The beach scene.
Laura: There's no dick in this scene at all, but it's awful. Fuck, it's so upsetting.
Ryan: What a fucking scene of escalating circumstances. Jesus Christ. So effectively, in Sharks, I don't really want to spoil it because it does kind of happen, but it involves, like, a dog. Then someone trying to save the dog, and then someone else tries to save the person saving the dog. And then effectively, what's left over is little baby is left, like, sitting on the beach.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, that's the whole thing.
Ryan: Um, that is the scene. And Scarlett Johansson's there as well. And there's another swimmer. There's a lot going on there, but it's fucking horrific. And I don't know if my description did anything to kind of quell it, but it kind of happens off screen. And then they get drawn into it and it just escalates from there.
Laura: Yeah, johansson doesn't do anything. Uh, she's just an outside observer to the situation, which is what she is most of the time, anyway. She's just trying to get the swimmer she's trying to get that swimmer into her black void.
Ryan: Yes. And she does, like, she succeeds, um, because even, like, that bit. Yeah. That bit where she does get hit into the van eventually is all pretty fucked up. It's pretty horrible.
Ryan: Um, but this is where we characterize the bad man, obviously, the biker, as the person who does the cleaning up, because he goes back to fix the situation effectively.
Laura: And you think maybe he'll go back and do something about that baby, but, uh, he does not.
Ryan: Well, you tell because it happens in the middle of the day, and then by the time the bad man goes to pick up the stuff, the baby's still there, and it's dark.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And the thing is, there's a shot of the baby, because all you hear at one point is just the baby screaming. Right. And then when the bad man goes to pick up the remnants of the stuff, that's there basically, like, wipe any sort of, uh, evidence that she was even there. Um, there's a bit that the writer, um, spoke about, uh, where the kid is in such desperate, dire straits that the kid, who's obviously maybe like one or two or something one, like a child, um, tries to stand up and walk on its own to obviously try and save itself. And it's haunting.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, it is haunting. It's rough. Like, a whole third of my notes is just on this scene alone. And the thing is, I shouldn't really be kind of delving too far into it because I don't obviously want to spoil it too much. Um, they've seen the movie by this point.
Laura: If you haven't, you should yeah.
Ryan: You probably should have watched it before you listened your goons. Yeah. No, it's so affecting. I like that it's there. And I'm just like because the world is a horrible place.
Laura: Scotland is the most beautiful place I've ever been.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: I don't think that goes without saying for my experience.
Laura: Um, but I think that that scene is so fascinating because you have this female who has this one goal, this one task, and her goal gets roped into this insane situation where one after another after another, things are getting pulled into the ocean, and, uh, everyone it's chaotic. It is absolute chaos. But yet it's not the shots aren't chaotic, the music I don't even know if it's terribly chaotic at that time. And she's just watching all of this occur in total silence. There's one point, I think she just puts her hands in her pockets and just kind of starts walking towards them, just blank faced, while these people's lives are effectively ending at the worst moment of their lives. And she just has the one goal, and that's the only thing that she thinks about. And it's crazy.
Ryan: Yeah. No, it's madness. It's madness.
Laura: I love it.
Ryan: Yeah. So, I mean, we move from that scene to effectively the club scene. Um yes.
Laura: This leads into penis scene number two.
Ryan: Yes. The second victim, effectively, or the third victim, I guess, would be at this point.
Laura: So she's driving in her van again, and she kind of clocks in on this guy walking alone because she's always looking for these men alone walking by themselves. And men that don't have families, men that aren't in relationships, men that maybe wouldn't be remembered or lost. You know what I mean?
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So this solo men, she sees this guy walking, and then when she realizes that it's in a big kind of club situation, uh, where there's lots of people, she tries to escape because that's not the situation she wants to be in. She doesn't want to have people see her. She doesn't want to be around a bunch of people.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: She just wants to snatch and grab.
Ryan: Well, the beginning segment of this is another, um, hidden camera moment, which kind of comes and goes relatively quite quickly. Ineffectively, I feel like, personally.
Laura: Is it the ladies?
Ryan: No, because that's obviously staged.
Laura: Oh, you think it is?
Ryan: Yeah, that's obviously staged.
Laura: I don't know what is and what isn't, so I think that's a good thing.
Ryan: Okay. I mean, it seems plainly obvious to me what is staged and what isn't staged.
Laura: Anyway, cool guy.
Ryan: Um, that's fine. Uh, the stuff that doesn't look amazing is the stuff that isn't staged.
Laura: I'm just along for the ride, okay. I'm not here to pick apart this thing. I'm just that's fine. Living it.
Ryan: I'm just saying.
Laura: What part are you talking about, though?
Ryan: Just the moment she enters the club, and there's all that quick cutting stuff to, like, people drinking, other folk dancing, and there's the music and stuff like that. And it's really, really fast. It's super, super fast. I don't know why it had to if you're trying to capture naturalism and if we've learned anything from, say, like, the Italian neorealists, is that the best way to capture realism is to just let it play out?
Laura: Yeah. I mean, out of 270 hours of footage, you thought maybe they could have put together a better club scene or.
Ryan: Just maybe picked, like, two or three shots or just picked one shot of Scarlett Johansson just walking through there and then that's it. Just kept it nice and simple. That's what I would have suggest. Obviously, I am not to the caliber of, uh, uh, the Glazer trailer. Glazer? No. But yeah. I don't know. There's some decisions that were made there.
Laura: Um well, the man that she ends up picking up at the club I loved him.
Ryan: Okay?
Laura: He cracked me up.
Ryan: Yeah, he's pretty funny. There's that whole kind of thing where he's just like, what do you get the drink? Do you want to go dancing? All that sort of thing. Which know, it's a thing. It's a thing in Scotland. That's something that you do.
Laura: Just one just one drink.
Ryan: Yeah. Well m. I mean well, one drink.
Laura: You get well, that's what he said.
Ryan: You get several drinks.
Laura: M. He had that button up and he was wearing cufflinks. Ridiculous. He looked insane. His shirt was way too big. It was great.
Ryan: They're all chaffs. He just looks like he's he's trying too hard. He's got his fucking shirt tucked into his jeans and stuff like that. Wearing his fucking forest boots or whatever. I don't know. We all look like plums back then. Like trying to do that whole thing. I grew out of that when I was 13, obviously.
Laura: You stopped picking up chicks at clubs when you were 13?
Ryan: No, looking like that. Yeah, looking like a ned.
Laura: Um, well, when they start chatting and she realizes, oh, I could get this guy, she goes, oh, I saw you in the street. I saw you walking down the street. Oh, you did? Okay.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: She gets to take that boy home to her void.
Ryan: She does. And the exact same thing happens where he ends up sinking into the blackness. The thing is that after that happens, we get to see what happens when they sink.
Laura: Because that's two for three. This is our second penis scene. That's, uh, two for two boners.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Just pointing that out. Same exact thing happens with your tilt down into the goo boner, into the blackness. And we haven't seen up to this point what happens underneath that liquid.
Ryan: No, we don't.
Laura: Um my God.
Ryan: It is the worst.
Laura: It is the stuff of nightmares. It is a nightmare.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: It's horrific. I don't even know if I could explain what happened down there.
Ryan: It is I can.
Laura: Oh, sure.
Ryan: So he sinks down because it's shot very strangely. You think it's shot in a tank? And I think some of it is.
Laura: Because floating because he's floating in this void.
Ryan: But there's no bubbles.
Laura: There's no bubbles and there's no movement of, uh, hair.
Ryan: No, nothing moving around. So you don't think it's, uh that.
Laura: I couldn't stop thinking. I go, Is he on wires? Are they in a tank? I couldn't quite figure out what was going on.
Ryan: It's maybe shot at, like, super slow. And they're doing everything really sped up to try and give it that sense of because certain things, like, if they move and stuff, there are certain elements of their bodies will not reflect the same wave. Say they move their fingers really fast. The skin ripples and stuff will still reflect what they are in real time, in reality. So that's something, I guess. But yeah, here's the thing. Uh, so he goes down there and there's someone else down there. Another naked man who looks like he's.
Laura: Screaming or is shouting.
Ryan: Well, he looks like he's in rectus pain.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, and I don't know who it would be. I don't think it's the first victim. It might be the swimmer, potentially.
Laura: I couldn't figure that out either.
Ryan: But you don't really recognize him because he looks deformed. He looks like he has been pruning for decades.
Laura: Water bloated.
Ryan: Just like the skin is starting to remove itself from his muscles.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: So it's all kind of Ripley like. He is aging quickly. But the thing is, this is probably one of the coolest effects in the film. And I'm assuming it's real.
Laura: I don't know. Um I don't know how this okay, sorry, go ahead.
Ryan: I'm assuming it's a model. And the way it's done is it's got all of its insides are filling it up. And it just is either very quickly evacuated out of the model with a giant vacuum, high powered vacuum, or it's shot super slow, or they shoot it over, cranking it so that it appears when it's on the film, obviously, it appears like it's really, really fast, and it just kind of happens. But effectively what you see is he's like a balloon. He's like a flesh balloon, and all of his innards are basically taken out of him super, super fast. All that is left is the human skin sack.
Laura: And it's this noise that happens, a snap when it occurs that is jarring.
Ryan: Like the cracking of a knuckle or something.
Laura: Yeah. And it's just he's there and then snap. Just skin.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And is floating around. He's just floating around in there. Uh, for a while.
Ryan: Yeah. I think that's definitely in a tank, potentially.
Laura: Yeah. That's got to be loading around, but holy moly.
Ryan: Thing is that's the thing that really is that there's a very live person who's just been put in there, who sees his fate unfold right in front of his eyes.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: Uh, kind of like yeah. Kind of like if someone's captured by a serial killer and they're put into their dungeon yeah.
Laura: And you see their previous victim go, you know what's going to happen next.
Ryan: Yeah. Ah, it's pretty grim, but it's also awesome.
Laura: Um, at 34 minutes and 45 seconds, the most haunting well, gosh, one of the most haunting parts of this film. So good. So freaking good.
Ryan: Yeah. No, it's very strong. It's very original. Like, you don't really see stuff like that too often.
Laura: This time it's different.
Ryan: This time it's slightly different.
Ryan: This is where we introduce Adam Pearson. Um, and I don't know if this was his first film role. It's certainly his defining film role.
Laura: Ah, he was not an actor.
Ryan: No.
Laura: Before this, I believe he wrote for television. They had actually contacted a charity called Changing Faces. So that's a support charity for people who have facial disfigurements. So that's where they met him. They met Adam Pearson. He has neurofibromatosis, so that's his condition. And so through speaking with him and talking with him and asking, would would you be comfortable being in this film and kind of agreeing to do that? Adam Pearson made suggestions about how Scarlett Johansson's character could actually lure him, uh, and those conversations that they had together, like, what kind of conversation would he have to have with another person to potentially be taken away to a house for sex, potentially. How could she seduce him? And so that conversation they actually used in the script. So those were conversations they actually had.
Ryan: Right. He's amazing in this film.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: Um, and it's purely on the basis that he's when I first saw the movie, because I feel like, um, you walk on eggshells a little bit. It's kind of like taking his visual appearance out of it. Like, just his character and just what he does with it. It's incredibly endearing and it's incredibly sad. When I first saw it, I thought that was all makeup.
Laura: Me, too.
Ryan: I didn't realize that he was, uh yeah.
Laura: You didn't know he had that condition.
Ryan: No, I didn't realize what it was. Um, obviously, he's moved on to bigger things now as well. But, uh, his role, as much as it is incredibly slight, he's not in it for very long.
Laura: Um, he does have the longest screen time out of any of her victims.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: So she picks him up just like she picked up everybody else, but using the words that he as a human being, not as the actor that discussed she seduces him. He was just a man going out at night, going to Tesco, trying to do his shop. And she kind of gets him into the car, flirts with him, and placates him. And he agrees to go with her to her black void. But it's such a sad but weirdly sweet kind of conversation that they have.
Ryan: Yeah. But you know where it's going. You know where it's going. Because she's not nice. It's not like she's doing it for the niceties of this man.
Laura: No.
Ryan: Although it kind of resolves itself. Um, anyway, um well, that boy did.
Laura: Not get to go to Tesco.
Ryan: He didn't get to go to Tesco. But he was able to escape.
Laura: Was he?
Ryan: Well, here's the thing. This also comes into play. Adam Pearson is then the predominant naked male for the remainder of his screen time. Basically, the minute he takes his clothes off, he doesn't put them back on.
Laura: No. That starts at 59 minutes, 19 seconds. And that ends the boner streak for this film. We only get two out of three, but, uh, two out of three ain't bad.
Ryan: No, that's fine meatloaf. Yeah. You don't have to have a boner.
Laura: No, I was just really excited because we got two out of three and that's the most we've ever had. And if there was an award, I would give it to this film. But that black void starts the same way that all the other ones do, but then almost exactly the same, except he doesn't get into the goo. Or does he start to get in?
Ryan: No, he is in the Goo.
Laura: He does get in there.
Ryan: He falls into the goo. But the thing is that as she's coming back down the stairs, um, she looks at herself, she sees her reflection in the window.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: For a while, and the next thing that we know is that he's coming out the same door completely starbollet naked. And she just lets him go like an animal. Out, uh, into the wilderness.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Out, uh, into the fucking dead election of Glasgow to try and find his way home. Completely start bollock naked.
Laura: Yeah. And it was 30 minutes away, by the way. That was a 30 minutes drive to that place from where she picked him up.
Ryan: So he's fucked. It's like 6 hours. Probably worth of walking with no clothes on.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Uh, but the biker man bad man's not happy about this.
Laura: No, because he walks through the hills. It's sunrise is coming up. He's totally naked walking through these fields. And when he is just getting back into his back garden, climbing through his.
Ryan: Fence I don't think that's his back garden.
Laura: You don't think it's well, I don't know.
Ryan: I think it's just civilization because I don't think he's been able to get.
Laura: Into I mean, it doesn't matter. He's going into someone's back garden, whether.
Ryan: It'S his or nice. It's a nice little Glasgow suburban area. These little, ah uh, cottage houses.
Laura: But the bad man knew where to find him. Parked up his motorcycle.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Punched out the window of the car sitting in the driveway. Opens up the trunk, grabs Adam Pearson, and puts that poor naked man in the trunk of the car.
Ryan: Yeah. That's the last we ever see of him.
Laura: And he drives off. And I love that shot of the woman in the window across the street just staring and just observing the entire thing.
Ryan: Yeah. It's fucked up.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: I guess like Scarlett Johansson's character's, Deescalation, basically, she stops looking for men.
Laura: I feel like she's looking for herself.
Ryan: Yeah. I think she's questioning her actions.
Laura: And I do believe that it all started during the club scene where she was forced uh she's not in her cave of her van anymore. She is forced into humanity and forced to be around people. She starts looking at herself more. Observing herself, observing her actions. Uh, finding pity on that last victim. That was the only victim that she had after the club scene. So she's trying to decide whether or not this is the life she wants to live. Does she want to be human?
Ryan: Potentially.
Laura: So there's weird scenes where she's trying to see what it would be like. She goes to that restaurant.
Ryan: Yeah. She vomits up cake.
Laura: She has a delicious piece of cake that she can't eat, obviously.
Ryan: I mean, it looked like a Black Forest ghetto. And if anyone's ever had a Black Forest I'm not a massive fan of a Black Forest cake.
Laura: I don't care.
Ryan: I'd probably vomit it up.
Laura: Give me the cake. Whatever cake is cake.
Ryan: She doesn't like the cake?
Laura: Well, no, she couldn't swallow the cake because she doesn't have the capacity because she's not a human being no. To eat the cake.
Ryan: No.
Laura: I mean, that's other things that she doesn't have, uh that humans typically have as well.
Ryan: Yeah. She doesn't have a vagina, I'm assuming.
Laura: She does not.
Ryan: Yeah, she has to double check.
Laura: That scene is wild, where she meets a man who's quite nice to her because she's distraught and they spend a lot of time together. And she thinks that this is what a normal human couple would do.
Laura: Have sex. M. So when it comes time to do that, this poor man is trying to initiate this intercourse, but it can't go anywhere because he has nowhere to put it.
Ryan: Yeah. He's bumping flesh, bumping skin.
Laura: There's nothing there.
Ryan: And she realizes he thinks initially it's just a case of misdirection, but it's not. It's because it's not being directed towards anything. There isn't anything.
Laura: There nothing there. She kind of crawls to the end of the bed and grabs a lamp and is checking it out down there. And then when she realizes that she can't do this, she's not human.
Ryan: Well, we are also assuming that's why? Because there's not explicitly well, no, you known but we're making a relatively quite measured nothing is explained conclusion to that. No, nothing's explained, no.
Ryan: Um, but for the most part, other than obviously the male nudity that we've there is a large portion of Scarlett Johansson nudity in this movie.
Laura: I'm glad that you brought that up, actually. I was going to bring it up later. But it's so fascinating to me how much of this film how much time of this film she spends completely naked, top to bottom. But we don't talk about that.
Ryan: No.
Laura: It's not something that you talk about because it is so other like it's so otherworldly in a way. And it's so alien. Ha ha.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Ah, but there's no sexuality whatsoever. There's no sexuality in this film.
Ryan: No.
Laura: So it's interesting that you have a film where Scarlett Johansson, super babe, super famous, is completely naked. But it wasn't talked about, really, in the media. It wasn't talked about amongst people that I knew either.
Ryan: No.
Laura: And I don't think a lot of people knew that she's naked in this movie, even after watching it. You don't remember?
Ryan: No, I don't remember. After I saw it, uh, back in 2013, I remember her being naked in the movie at all.
Laura: I remembered the penises.
Ryan: That's the only thing I remember. This is the only occasion where I remembered the deck over anything else.
Laura: Right.
Ryan: Really? Um, well, here's the thing. Like, by 2012, she's already done the Avengers movie, right?
Laura: I believe so.
Ryan: Yeah. She's already in the MCU at this point. Right. Whatever that means. Um, I mean, the idea of any of those actors moving on to doing anything like under the skin at this point in their careers, this deep into that cinematic universe, that tripe fest, it seems unfathomable to me to be able.
Laura: To do your smaller, independent type of art.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Especially ones where you're naked.
Ryan: I mean, anything. I mean, Scarlett, at least.
Laura: I'm really trying to wreck my brain right now to think about it.
Ryan: Well, at least Scarlett has put herself out there.
Laura: Uh, the last thing that I really kind of wanted to talk about before we start to do our wrap up is that Woodsman at the end of the film, who, interestingly enough, was just the owner of the land that they were filming on. And so they just asked him, hey, would you mind trying to rape our main character?
Ryan: How do you feel about that?
Laura: And he said, sure.
Ryan: Poor guy. He was just like, okay. Because I feel like it was a little bit more of a back and forth.
Laura: Of course, I'm just making a joke. Because they had to. Basically.
Ryan: Scarlett Johansson.
Laura: They had to rehearse over and over and over again with not Scarlett Johansson. Uh, over and over and over again. And he kept apologetic. And that no, go harder, go harder. Be meaner, be meaner.
Ryan: And he's I would like to be known as the considerate rapist, please.
Laura: Very scary. That part is terrifying.
Ryan: Uh, yeah.
Laura: No, I mean middle of nowhere. I think they were on the West Highland Way, so there was nowhere to park. They had to hike in to get there.
Ryan: As scenes of that caliber go, it's not the most horrific. It's characterized by a couple of little moments that happen that immediately make it, uh, overtly sexual, where he's like, groping her and stuff like that when she's asleeping, asleeping, asleeping. Well, here's the thing. Yeah. It's not the most brutal of scenes of that.
Laura: It's not the most brutal because it's.
Ryan: Not straw dogs or anything like that.
Laura: If you tell me that there's a rape scene in a film, I'm not going to want to watch it. But also, she's running away and she's afraid. And I think it's this humanity that's kind of coming to the forefront that wasn't there before because she's been a predator the entire film. So it's a weird turnaround at the end of the movie where she's gone from predator, Predator, Predator, and then she's turned into prey.
Ryan: Yeah, this is maybe like a few more ideas, like coming to the fore. But at the same time, because she's chosen the skin of a woman. I don't know if necessarily the alien itself would be classed as female, but she has chosen the skin of a woman to represent herself so that she can easily attract men, which is what I kind of see it as. But obviously the counterpoint to that is that you're going to come across some men. And there were some instances earlier on, um, where, uh, she's attacked by a group of youths and like a council estate and stuff. But then she also becomes the target just purely by the virtues of being a woman. And it's the world that we live in, unfortunately, is that there will be men out there who will, uh, prey on her and attack her for purely being a woman. Um, it's disgusting. There is evil in the world. But, uh, the thing is, I class it less as like a kind of brutal rape moment in that she's attacked so that the seams of her skin start to rupture and tear. Effectively.
Laura: Yes. So, um, we can uncover what's under the skin.
Ryan: Yeah. And I think when the first time I watched the movie, I found getting up to this moment just after, let's say the Adam Pearson stuff, right. The film gets a little bit sleepy, gets a little bit slow for my liking.
Laura: Uh, yeah. Well, you're just doing a nice dates on many dates. Yeah.
Ryan: Well, you're changing locales and stuff. You're going from the urban landscape to this more rural. Rural to the countryside. So that she can obviously start to try and find herself. Um, but yes. No, this scene, she fucking just peels her skin off, you know? I mean, yeah, it's crazy. She's like looking at her own face.
Laura: As it blinks at her was really cool. I liked that a lot.
Ryan: It's fine because the woodsman sees the ed of his ways and he just sets her on fire.
Laura: Yeah. He goes, if I can't have you, no one can set her on fire.
Ryan: Or he's like, I can't believe what I'm looking at. I must kill it with fire.
Laura: Well, yeah, that's definitely the reason. That is 100% the reason.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: But yeah.
Ryan: Uh, what would you do if you saw a, ah, creature harboring, ah, human skin in the woods? Would you set it on fire? Answers on a postcard, please.
Laura: I can tell you right now. No, I would just go away.
Ryan: I think I would go yeah.
Laura: I wouldn't go back to my truck to get a can of gasoline and a lighter.
Ryan: Yeah. Kill what you don't understand.
Laura: Gross little tidbits about the movie. So there was a few people considered for the role before Scarlett Johansson. I think maybe she was first choice. She was the only person to stay on and attach the project for the four years before it was actually made. But, um, ava Green, January Jones, Abby Cornish and Olivia Wilde were all people that were potentially going to play this role.
Ryan: Scarlett's the best choice.
Laura: Yeah. I think that's why she was the but she stayed on, uh, she stayed committed the whole time. And I think that this script went through three different iterations before it hit this final one, or maybe two different iterations. And this is the third and final one.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So it was an original novel by Michael Faber written in 2000.
Ryan: But Jonathan, Michael, or Michelle?
Laura: I have it written I don't know.
Ryan: I think it's M-M-I-C-H-E-L. So maybe Michelle.
Laura: Michelle.
Ryan: Michelle Faber.
Laura: I do apologize.
Ryan: Yeah. Sorry, Mike.
Laura: Uh, but Glazer didn't want to film the book. But he wanted the book. To be a film. Right. So he had it rewritten, and then the second iteration were two aliens disguised as married farmers. That was the second iteration. And Brad Pitt was actually cast as one of the farmers.
Ryan: Right?
Laura: Yeah. But progress was super slow in making it, so that got scrapped completely.
Ryan: Supposedly. This was ten years in the making, this movie.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: Yeah. So then it was finally rewritten, completely focusing on the female. All of the big special effects scenes were cut because they had a much bigger budget before when Brad Pitt was.
Ryan: Obviously there's still effects in obviously this now iteration of the movie, but they're incredibly subtle and they're ever so slight, which is kind of, at the end of the day, the very basis of good filmmaking is using what you have at your disposal and making sure that if it goes too big let's put into perspective here any marvel movie made within the last, like, 14 months. Uh, they go too big to the point where it looks like shit. At least here, if you keep it relatively quite small, you're still kind of gaining that suspension of disbelief with it.
Laura: And you pick and choose your moments in which to use it. It's not in every single scene, so you have your specified moments where you have to use these effects.
Ryan: Well, the thing is, if 90% of what you're shooting is completely real, the 10% you can hide for sure. So that's why when you see the behind the scenes stuff of her as the final alien, which is effectively just this, uh, let's just say, like a black mass in the shape of a humanoid. Right. Uh, that face doesn't exist in the scene. It's obviously computer generated, but you don't notice it.
Laura: No.
Ryan: Um, and I guess with that, there's a lot of ties to a film that I really like. I think we both like it. Is Annihilation that's kind of what?
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Ryan: There's a lot of ties from under the Skin to Annihilation, which I quite enjoy. I think that's why I enjoyed under the Skin this time more, since I loved Annihilation so much.
Laura: I want to ask you a very important question.
Ryan: What's that?
Laura: Would, uh, you recommend this movie?
Ryan: I think back in 2013, it was maybe a little bit harder to recommend just because of the level of bias and controversy I had just in general back then. But now, yeah, I think, ah, it's a cinema lovers movie. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, um, just purely because of how kind of secretive and cloudy and certainly this is quite an obscure level of storytelling. I kind of feel like it's coming out there. It's not unintelligible, but none of the conversations she has with anyone in the movie lends anything other than just her trying to get from the point A to point B, which we never see her get to. It's always about kind of luring these men in.
Laura: Effectively, that's all she says and that's.
Ryan: All she ever talks about. And it's always one note. It's never developed any further.
Laura: Do you think?
Ryan: I'm pretty much, yeah. Like, that's effectively what it comes down to. I think you're pretty I mean and, um, of course it's Scarlett Johansson. Of course she's know they stick a fucking mop wig on her, and they're just kind of like, well, this will help. It's like, oh, my God. Just look at your eyes and your lips. Oh, my Christ, you look fucking tone. It's all tone.
Laura: I would recommend this movie as well. I liked it when I saw it first. I actually liked it quite a bit more this time. I don't know why, but I really liked it. Well, I do know why. Because we've been doing this podcast, I've been doing this research for so long. And to find a film that's so different in terms of the kind of full frontal male nudity that we've seen.
Ryan: In the past, we've also seen more films, and we've matured a fair amount.
Laura: Uh, we're growing.
Ryan: Yeah. Ah. It means we're getting older. It means we will die eventually.
Laura: Thank goodness.
Ryan: Thank God. Bring me the void.
Laura: Bring me that sweet, sweet goo.
Laura: In terms of the ratings for this film, um, I'm going to ask you first in terms of visibility and context.
Ryan: Right. Okay.
Laura: Zero to five for the penis scenes.
Ryan: Five? Yeah, five, probably.
Laura: I agree 100%.
Ryan: Yeah, it all makes sense.
Laura: I will be in the club with you. Five stars.
Ryan: Cool.
Laura: And in terms of the film overall, zero to five.
Ryan: So it's taken me ten years near enough ten years to come to a rating on this. Because when I first saw it, everyone was glowing. I didn't really know what to make of it. But the thing is, that's how I feel about every film that's on my favorite film list before it ends up on my favorite film list. So I gave it five out of five.
Laura: Oh, my gosh. That's a legitimate gasp. When we finished the movie, I looked at him and I go, but, uh, you'll give it a four.
Ryan: It was going to be a four and a half.
Laura: Wow.
Ryan: And there are some parts of the film that are a little bit sleepy. But it feels like everything, at least in this film, is incredibly deliberate. And I don't want to be like a pretentious arty kind of filmmaker asshole and be like, this is Jonathan Glazer's 2001. But it kind of is, to be fair, it's his ode to that kind of science fiction storytelling, which is a little bit ambiguous. It's incredibly secretive. It's really dark, and it's kind of got this tone about it, uh, this underlying tone that's incredibly menacing and a little bit sinister. But there's a lot of visual ideas that I vibe with in this movie, be it like the biker on the road, her in the van, the void, the wood scenes, uh, the solitude, the isolation, the brief elements of characterization, the amount of silence, the way the sound is used that I do know and like. Stuff that I like putting in there because they are strong visual ideas.
Laura: Yeah. There's a few things in that film that I recognize from work that you've.
Ryan: Done, and it feels relatively quite unconscious. I won't say anything's kind of ripped straight from there.
Laura: No.
Ryan: But it's like there's elements in there that I feel like this film has had a bigger impact on me than I probably realized. So that's why it's getting a five. It goes into my favorite films list.
Laura: Wow.
Ryan: And I'll probably watch it again at some point next week because I did really dig it. Even though there's parts of it where I'm like, this could be done better, but just because I give it a five, none of my films are perfect anyway. If I give them a five, it's because I understand and I respect its importance to me, uh, as a film watcher and a filmmaker, I am blown away.
Laura: That's amazing. How exciting.
Ryan: I know. Isn't that great?
Laura: It is exciting.
Ryan: I can't believe this happened on a Saturday.
Laura: I know. Usually you don't feel so highly about these films, so this is wonderful, wonderful news.
Ryan: This isn't to live and die in La. That's for sure.
Laura: But still beautiful. So I'm going to give it a four because that's how I feel about it. I like this movie a lot. I like what it's done. I like how and I've said it a million times already, that our full frontal scene is so different from scenes are so different from anything that we've experienced before in the films that we've done. I think Scarlett Johansson's amazing. I love that it's set in Scotland. And yeah, I would watch this movie again as well. I think that the objective is executed really beautifully.
Ryan: I think the film looks really good as well. I really dig the way it looks. Um, yeah. Even with some of the surveillance stuff and the people watching things, there is elements of that that I do quite like. And I think some of that stuff actually does quite look quite nice.
Laura: It's weirdly homey and comforting at times when you wouldn't expect it to be because you're watching these street scenes and the people watching from an alien perspective. But it's weirdly comforting.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Is there anything that we missed? Anything you wanted to add before we shut it down?
Ryan: The guy didn't have to be playing, uh, a Deacon Blue CD on his radio.
Laura: You really wanted to hit it home where you were.
Ryan: Well, I mean, the only other thing it could have been was like, let's just stick on some fucking David Byrne or some talking heads or something. Or even worse, the proclaimers.
Laura: Well, thank you so much for joining me and uncovering a five star movie for you today, Ryan. I'm thrilled.
Ryan: I couldn't be any more excited.
Laura: I can tell.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Coming to you from an unmarked white van. I have been, Laura.
Ryan: I'm still Ryan.
Laura: We'll catch you next time.
Ryan: Bye.
Laura: Uh.