Glazer’s fascinating third feature is nothing like we have ever seen—a deliberately-paced tale of an ‘alien’ on Earth (precisely Scotland) in female form who seduces men to their doom.

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I first saw Under the Skin ten years ago in the cinema and couldn’t really appreciate it.  It was too slow and abstract for me, and I sometimes wonder whether mainstream viewers who were lured into watching it because of Scarlett Johansson ever regretted doing so. 

Mind you, this was a time when Johansson enjoyed increased popular attention on the back of successes with The Avengers (2012) and Her (2013), the latter albeit just featuring her sultry voice. 

But as far as luring and seduction are concerned, none has been more pronounced than her role as an ‘alien’ in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, only his third feature. (His fourth, The Zone of Interest, premiered at Cannes this year.) 

Johansson spends most of her time in rainy Scotland trying to get men into her van so that she can lead them to their woeful demise. 

“Do you want to look at me?”

Most of these men are just unlucky, but it goes to show how gender stereotypes can be exploited, not just as a commentary on society but also, in this case, a fascinating play on genre tropes. 

How they die is disturbing, maybe morbidly poetic—this is where Glazer’s film raises the bar in terms of using visual minimalism and music as sound design (yay to Mica Levi whose foray into film composing began here) to sublime effect. 

Some might describe Under the Skin as sci-fi erotica, though Johansson spends much more time driving a van (a masculine construct) than stripteasing, but as her character begins to feel the way of the world, she starts to ‘malfunction’. 

The film is still as slow and abstract as I remembered it; however, I find myself in touch with its grand theme of human alien-nation and connectedness more than ever.  A decade on, there’s still really nothing like it.     

Grade: A-

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