 I had planned to record other videos this weekend and do other projects but I saw something yesterday that I wanted to stop and tell you about. I watched Under the Skin, a 2013 science fiction movie starring Scarlett Johansson, which I had heard about in passing a couple of times. A few weeks ago I downloaded a handful of these films that I had been reading about and Under the Skin was among them and last night I sat down to watch the first few minutes of it to see what it was about, see if it would be something that I would want to sit through and I ended up sitting through the whole thing. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I'll tell you before I go any further that I am recommending this film as strongly as I can. I'll also tell you that it's not going to be for everybody. There are people who are going to find it too disturbing. It is a horror film. It is a real horror film. It is not a splatter film or a startle film like we've come to think of horror films today. Every scene in this film is disturbing in one way or another and they're disturbing in different ways. I'll also say before I go any further that if you're taking my recommendation seriously, don't read anything about the film first. Don't even read the Wikipedia description and certainly don't read about the novel. It is based on a novel. Just go get the film and sit down and watch it. This movie is unlike anything I've seen recently. It is actual cinema. It is actually the art of film. It is a very carefully crafted visual and audio experience. The first line of dialogue in the film happens 14 minutes in. I was watching the clock. And even then what little dialogue is happening is just another part of the audio-visual scenery. I noticed at about half an hour into the film that I had not heard one single sentence of plot advancing dialogue. There was not a single conversation that actually advanced the story or the plot. Everything was about watching the film. This was not just a radio play in which the director filmed the actors having their conversations, which is what most movies are. You can actually watch most movies without actually looking at the TV or at the movie screen. You can work while you're watching movies and experience them just fine. This film, you have to shut up and glue your eyes to the screen and watch the movie. The only thing I'll tell you is that Scarlett Johansson is killing men. That's clear from the very first scene. That's what she does. It's clear what she's doing. It is not clear why she's doing it and it's not clear how she's doing it. It's left up to you to watch the film and in some ways just decide for yourself what you're actually seeing. There aren't any questions that are answered for you. I don't like it when people compare films to 2001 and Space Odyssey, but I'm going to do it here. I'm going to do one of the things that I hate because I really hate it when people do this. Earlier that same day I had actually watched some of 2001 and Space Odyssey and if you're familiar with that film and with much of Kubrick's work, there's a great deal of silence in his films in which it's left up to you to watch the screen and absorb what's happening rather than have things explained to you. That's what's happening in this film. In fact, the entire film is that way. You need to watch the film and abandon any need to have everything explained to you and just experience the awfulness. I feel like this film had a lot to say about the experience of being human, in particular about the experience of being a human woman. People who have been victims of assault, particularly victims of rape, may not be able to stand sitting through this film and I would certainly understand that. For those of us who have not had those kinds of unfortunate experiences, I think we could learn from watching this. I feel like I saw something important, something that I could learn from, not just a film. Having said that, I don't believe I'll be watching this film again. I could see myself showing it to someone else and watching it with them, but sitting down myself, no. Although I do think there's a great deal to learn about filmmaking from watching this, especially how to tell a story without having your actors just gabbing the whole time. After seeing the film, I went onto Wikipedia and read a synopsis of the novel and just the first sentence of the synopsis told me more detail about what was happening than I could have imagined for myself from the film. So this was a proper cinematic interpretation of a novel. It doesn't try to reproduce the novel. So if you haven't figured it out yet, I recommend Under the Skin. I recommend that you get a copy of it, that you not learn anything about it before watching it, and that you sit down in a quiet place and a quiet time and absorb this film. And if you have trouble tolerating it, don't feel guilty, just stop. Maybe come back to it later. At the very least, I guarantee you've not seen anything like this before. And that by itself is always worth something.