Cold Skin and why it's one of the most underrated films of all time

Yesterday whilst I was surfing the channels on my TV I noticed a movie with a peculiar title of Cold Skin. This sounds interesting, I thought to myself, so I pressed the record button as I had other things to do. After a long and tiring day I decided to relax with a good movie and some homemmade soup and rememberd this action so I immediatley put it on. As I'm sure you guessed by the title I was certainly not dissapointed.

The best way to describe this film is if you took Guillermo Del Toro's scifi love story The Shape of Water (2017) and mixed it with the setting and time period of Robert Eggers' supernatural thriller The Lighthouse (2019). All three are thought provoking and excelent in their own right, however, this one is hands down my favorite out of all of them.

The film is based on a novel of the same name (originally titled La pell freda) by Catalan author Albert Sanchez Pinol so I know what I will be seeking out in the meantime. After I read it I'll be sure to give a review, maybe even a comparasin between the two.

The movie is enjoyable for many aspects, and we're going to look at them one by one, starting with...

The Cast

For a movie with a fairly small cast (excluding the extras and the supporting actors) to work it needs to have performances strong enough to carry the story and it's many aspects. Fortunatley this one does really well in that department. The movie is headlined by Ray Stevenson, David Oakes and Aura Garrido who have great chemistry with each other with Stevenson as a consistently angry lighthouse keeper who tries to hold on to every semblence of his humanity, however quickly loosing it in the process, Oaks as a young meteorologist with a fondness for Dante who quickly finds out about not only the existence of the creatures, but about their true nature as well and Guerro as a member of the underwater humanoid species who works on Stevenson's character's (named Gruner) behalf. If I had to pick a favorite performace it would probably be Guerro as I love when an actor can convey a wide range of emotions through a mask and prosthetics.

The Writing

The movie isn't the deepest or most thought provoking film I've seen, however it does tell a story which can come off as incredibly cheesy if done poorly and that is the man is the real monster narrative we've seen done time and time again in various forms of media: from True Blood to The Walking Dead to Nightbreed to Avatar to Pan's Labyrinth to Hellboy 2 to Svitlana Taratorina's novel Lazarus to Carnival Row. However, whilst it is overplayed and has become almost a parody of itself in most cases I still retain that if done well it can add some neccessary depth to the piece of fiction at hand. And that's certainly the case here. Is it cliche? Certainly. Does it break any new ground? Not particularly. But is it well executed and the message at hand is delivered well? Definetley. So it's safe to say that it works well for what it tries to achieve.

The Effects

I'm a sucker for good practical effects and costume work. Sure, CGI can certainly be impressive, but these just look so much better to me. Every creature design looks strangely human, yet delightfully monstrous at the same time and allow for enough experssion to make them seem less like cold lifeless husks. As a big Lovecraft fan I certainly got that vibe from them and I hope this technique will be used in some adaptations of his work as well.

Do I reccomend it?

I do. If you're a fan of monster movies who are light on violence and try to tell a touching and moving story about the true face of our own species then this is certainly a movie for you. It's visually stunning, intelligently consturcted and beautifully thought through and I will certainly be coming back to it. Maybe sometime when the cold winter months arrive.