Under the Skin

Most directors since Ghost World have just pointed their cameras at Scarlett Johansson and let her butt do the rest---especially, disappointingly, Sofia Coppola; especially, unsurprisingly, Woody Allen---an apex you’d think was reached with Black Widow’s catsuit, but has Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) got a challenge for you. In a script so wordless it makes Gravity seem like it was written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, Johansson roams the Scottish coast looking for men to lure and consume as food because she’s an alien. She has some compassion---she goes after the lonely ones with no family; a disfigured one gets to live---but is otherwise characteristic-free, which is notable because it takes no convincing on her part to get any of the men to come home with her, and they walk into her black pit of death smiling and hard. (Trigger warning: Full frontal.) Their desire for her as a physical object literally consumes them. Hashtag social commentary! Too bad the entire enterprise is completely fucking unpleasant, with many boob shots---pointless as Wolverine’s butt---spliced in for your edification. Glazer judges the men who die as he leers at Johansson in the exact same manner. Then there’s a fire, and you wonder why you bothered. —Tara Thorne