Movie Review: Knives and Skin

Knives and Skin ** / *****                                                                                  

Directed by: Jennifer Reeder.

Written by: Jennifer Reeder.

Starring: Kate Arrington (Renee Darlington), Marika Engelhardt (Lisa Harper), Tim Hopper (Dan Kitzmiller), Grace Smith (Joanna Kitzmiller), Alex Moss (Aaron), Audrey Francis (Lynn Kitzmiller), Tony Fitzpatrick (Principal Markum), James Vincent Meredith (Doug Darlington), Raven Whitley (Carolyn Harper), Ty Olwin (Andy Kitzmiller), Robert T. Cunningham (Jesse Darlington), Marilyn Dodds Frank (Gramma Miriam Kitzmiller), Genevieve Venjohnson (Bridey Kurtich), Ireon Roach (Charlotte Kurtich), Kayla Carter (Laurel Darlington), Aurora Real de Asua (April Martinez), Jalen Gilbert (Jason Kendrick), Haley Bolithon (Afra Siddiqui), Grace Etzkorn (Candice), Emma Ladji (Colleen). 

 

From its opening moments, it is clear that Knives and Skin has been made by a filmmaker who has seen Twin Peaks, and is trying to put their own twist on it. That is precisely what Jennifer Reeder is attempting here – making a movie about a missing (dead) girl, and its effects on her small town in the wake of that disappearance. She focuses mostly on the high school she went to – where she didn’t seem to have many friends – and then slowly moves outwards into the lives of the parents, teachers, etc. The film mostly looks and sounds great – but is dramatically inert, and the surreal touches ring hollow. It feels like it was a film with a message, that didn’t figure out how to deliver that message in an interesting way.

 

The opening scene for the movie sets the tone. It is the night that Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) is to go missing – but she doesn’t know that yet. She’s with Andy (Ty Olwin) in the middle of nowhere, because he thinks they’re going to have sex. When she changes her mind though, he strands her there in her band uniform – without her glasses or phone. She doesn’t make it home. From there, we cycle through the people in her orbit – her mother Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), delivering the best, weirdest performance in the movie as she is unable to come to grips with her missing daughter, and goes in dangerous directions, particularly because she’s a teacher at the school. Andy’s sister Joanna (Grace Smith), has a few interesting side plots – involving selling her mother’s panties to the principal, and then flirting with a new teacher, until it becomes clear that he is taking things way too seriously. In Andy, the principal and the teacher, we have three generations of bad men – all sexualizing teenage girls in ways that see them just as objects. Bad teenagers become bad men, I guess being the message.

 

It just doesn’t ring that true though. The film often pauses for strange, acapella renditions of 1980s pop songs by the teenagers – either in choir, or by themselves, delivered in emotionless monotone. Is the message here that they don’t understand the songs – they being from a different generation – or that they are too emotionally stunted to enjoy anything? The parents are just as stunted however – in different ways – trapped in loveless marriages, and emotionless affairs, etc.

 

The film seemingly wants to be a feminist take on Lynch’s Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet – an admirable goal to be sure. But Reeder never reaches Lynch’s depths – his weirdness, and the surreal touches, comes out of something emotionally real – and hers seem borrowed, from Lynch and others. There is promise here – the film does look good, and there are moments that work, and the ambitions of the film are admirable. It just adds up to a lot of nothing.