 A film in three minutes, The Reflecting Skin. What ingredients are needed to make a truly great horror film? Is it how scared the story makes you feel, or how many times you jump up in fright? Is it how relatable the characters are when trying to escape from some desperate situation? Or does your definition of horror come from some place deeper, a place where the landscape and people seem a bit off? Because Philip Ridley's 1990 masterpiece The Reflecting Skin could perhaps be the best example of such a terrifying horror recipe. Easily one of the most visually startling and haunting horror films ever to be shot on celluloid. Set in a nameless, isolated prairie community in 1950s America, the story follows eight-year-old Seth, played by Jeremy Cooper, whose parents live a drab, impoverished life operating a remote gas station. When a group of men driving a Cadillac pass through the area, a series of strange killings begins to affect the lives of the locals. Killings that Seth suspects are linked to a foreign widow who exhibits almost vampiric characteristics when she's alone. It's hard to know where to begin when discussing the cinematic artistry and complexity that is The Reflecting Skin. Its narrative, although seemingly basic and quite minimalist upon first viewing, belies a far more complex and thought-provoking beast, making you squirm with increasing discomfort the more you delve deeper into this world. The beautiful cinematography composed by Dick Pope contains a hypnotic mesmerizing quality, which slowly washes over you thanks to the hues of golden light and endless fields of yellow wheat. The heavy use of saturated shadow and contrast is reminiscent of the works of painters such as Caravaggio and Andrew Wyeth, making full stunning compositions in almost every scene. But one of the film's strongest achievements is how claustrophobic the world of the characters feels despite the endless open planes. There's an almost suffocating tension from the moment go as Seth's troubled childhood is slowly revealed to us, with the featureless planes of wheat acting as a character unto themselves by keeping the roster of strange beings seemingly trapped forever in this world of morbid shadow and gold. This feeling too is greatly enhanced by the extraordinarily gripping and oppressively bleak score composed by Nick Baccar, whose string-heavy melodies blend in perfectly with the stark yet alluring visuals director Ridley created. Despite a style-over-substance argument made by some, few film settings come as close to the concept of horror as the terrifying universe presented to us here. A bleak world filled with nightmarish creatures and humans who are hiding something dark between the shadows, leaving you finally with only one question that demands an answer. Are you daring enough, like Seth is, to reach out and see what lies beneath the reflecting skin?