If Under the Skin had come out in the ‘70s, people would’ve talked about it in the same breath as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Instead, it came out in 2013, which means most people either haven’t seen it, or if they did, they have no idea what the hell they just watched. And honestly, that makes sense.
Under the Skin isn’t a movie you casually recommend to your friends—unless your friends are into staring into the void and wondering if reality itself is an elaborate trick designed to strip away their humanity.
So, what makes this film—about an alien disguised as Scarlett Johansson, driving around Scotland in a white van, seducing and liquifying men—so great? The answer has nothing to do with the plot. In fact, if you’re looking for traditional storytelling, Under the Skin is the cinematic equivalent of giving you the finger. This movie is about mood, atmosphere, and—above all—alienation. And it’s the most unsettling and oddly beautiful exploration of what it means to be human that’s come out in the last decade.
The Alien We Didn’t See Coming
On paper, Under the Skin sounds like a high-concept sci-fi thriller. It’s not. There’s almost no dialogue, and what dialogue there is feels improvised or mundane, as if the words themselves are irrelevant. This is a film that speaks through images, through silence, through the long, slow stretches of tension where nothing and everything is happening at the same time. It’s about what it feels like to exist in a world that’s not quite your own.
The genius of Scarlett Johansson’s performance isn’t that she’s pretending to be an alien—it’s that she’s not pretending at all. She’s simply there, an outsider among outsiders. There’s no grand reveal of her true identity, no epic confrontation where the alien nature is exposed. You know from the start what she is, and yet, as the movie unfolds, you start to forget. You begin to see the world through her eyes—detached, confused, fascinated by the smallest human behaviors. And that’s where the film’s real power lies: it forces you to see the world as if you were an alien, to step outside your own skin and question what it even means to be “human” in the first place.
The Cinematic Anti-Experience
Watching Under the Skin is like listening to an album made entirely of ambient noise. There’s something oddly captivating about it, but you can’t explain why. The film’s pacing is glacial, but it’s never boring. In fact, it creates this strange paradox: it’s a movie where not much happens, but you can’t look away. Every shot, every frame is dripping with a kind of quiet menace that burrows under your skin (pun intended) and stays there long after the credits roll.
There’s a sequence early on where Johansson lures a man into what can only be described as a black, featureless void, and he slowly sinks into the liquid abyss while she walks on water, her face blank and unreadable. It’s not just eerie—it’s hypnotic. This isn’t a traditional predator-prey dynamic. It’s something else entirely, something almost ritualistic. You’re not sure if you should be horrified or fascinated. Probably both.
Director Jonathan Glazer has created a film that operates on a frequency most people aren’t even tuned into. It’s not just art-house. It’s art. Period. And that’s where Under the Skin shines. It refuses to be anything but what it is—a slow, methodical descent into alienness, with a visual and auditory landscape that feels as foreign as the creature itself.
The Horror of Being Human
But here’s the real kicker: Under the Skin isn’t just about an alien on Earth. It’s about what happens when the alien starts to become human. Johansson’s character starts the film as a detached observer, cold and methodical, but over time, she becomes curious, almost empathetic. She starts to wonder about these fragile, strange creatures called humans. She even begins to feel a little bit like one herself—until the world brutally reminds her that she’s not, and never will be.
The film is as much about her growing realization of her own alienation as it is about the men she lures and destroys. There’s a moment near the end, when she looks at her reflection in the mirror and begins to peel away her human skin. And that’s when the whole point of the movie hits you: the thing that makes us human isn’t our skin, it’s the way we feel disconnected, the way we try (and often fail) to understand each other. Humanity, in Under the Skin, is defined by alienation. The alien is alien precisely because she starts to feel what it’s like to be human—and it terrifies her.
What It All Means (Or Doesn’t)
I’m not going to pretend that Under the Skin has a neat, easy interpretation. That’s part of its brilliance. You can’t pin it down. It’s a movie that slithers out of your grasp the moment you think you’ve figured it out. Is it a feminist critique of objectification? Sure. Is it a meditation on the fragile nature of identity? Absolutely. Is it a commentary on loneliness, on the inability to truly connect with others, no matter how hard you try? You bet.
But maybe it’s none of those things. Maybe it’s just an alien driving around in a van, seducing people with no dialogue and a minimalistic soundtrack. And that’s what makes it so hauntingly effective. It doesn’t give you the satisfaction of resolution. It leaves you unsettled, questioning what you just saw, questioning the very nature of what it means to “see.”
The Thing Under the Skin
In a way, Under the Skin is the perfect film for our age. It’s a movie about being alien, but it’s also about being isolated, disconnected from a world that looks familiar but feels deeply foreign. It taps into the same existential dread that comes from scrolling through social media for hours, seeing everyone’s life unfold while you sit there feeling like an outsider in your own existence.
That’s what makes Under the Skin so great. It’s not about the alien. It’s about us—the alienation, the disconnection, the quiet horror of living in a world where everyone’s a stranger, even yourself.
And if that doesn’t freak you out, you’re not paying attention.