Skinamarink is a 2022 Canadian experimental horror film, written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature directorial debut.

The film follows a young brother and sister who wake up during the night to discover that they cannot find their father and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are disappearing.

Before the production of Skinamarink, Ball ran a YouTube channel where he would upload videos based on nightmares recounted by commenters.

His short film Heck (2020) was developed as a proof of concept for Skinamarink, which was shot on digital video at Ball's childhood home in Edmonton.

The siblings wake up in the middle of the night to find that their father has disappeared and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are gradually vanishing.

He walks into a bedroom which becomes a void, and a dollhouse is shown sitting on a pile of toys in a seemingly infinite hallway as onscreen text reads "572 days".

[4] It was shot on digital video,[5] with Jamie McRae serving as cinematographer,[6] in Ball's childhood home in Edmonton.

[7] McRae shot on a Sony FX6 with Arri Ultra Prime lenses, and lit the film with whatever they had available on location, primarily a CRT television and small LED light.

[9] Ball stated, "Shooting a movie in the house you grew up in about two characters that are more or less you and your sister, I didn't have to try to make it more personal—it just sort of happened.

"[10] Ball cited the work of filmmakers Chantal Akerman, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lynch as influences on Skinamarink.

'"[10] The cartoons seen on the television in Skinamarink are in the public domain, including Somewhere in Dreamland (1936) and The Cobweb Hotel shorts,[11] Balloon Land (1935), and Prest-O Change-O (1939).

[9] This version was repeatedly uploaded to YouTube with excerpts posted to Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter, where it attracted considerable word-of-mouth acclaim.

The website's consensus reads: "Skinamarink can be more confounding than frightening, but for viewers able or willing to dial into its unique wavelength, this unsettling film will be difficult to shake.

[26] Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote, "I found Skinamarink terrifying, but it's a film that asks for (and rewards) patience, and can therefore invite revolt [...] Yet if you go with it, you may feel that you've touched the uncanny.

"[27] Michael Gingold from Rue Morgue praised the film's shot compositions and sound design, writing that it "takes you back to being a little kid lying in bed in the middle of the night, listening to strange noises coming from elsewhere in the house and wondering what their frightful sources might be.

"[28] Dread Central's Josh Korngut awarded Skinamarink a score of three-and-a-half out of five stars, calling it "a deeply unsettling exploration of death, childhood, and the house you grew up in", and concluding: "For those seeking a traditional horror movie experience, turn back now.

"[29] Matt Donato of /Film commended the film for its atmosphere, which he felt was derived from a familiarity with childhood experiences of fear, though he also criticized its runtime as overlong.

compared the narrative structure of Skinamarink to that of a dream, and wrote that it elicits fear through "a familiar dread that paints the entire film" rather than a conventional storyline.

"[5] Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the film "accomplished but seemingly unfinished—indeed, hardly begun", lamenting it as having "no referent world, no identifiable background, for [its images and sounds] to symbolize or suggest.

"[33] Richard Whittaker of The Austin Chronicle wrote that its 100-minute length "gives Ball more time to create subtle thematic vibrations, build up dreamlike symbolism and resonances through recurrent images [...] Yet it's also an eye-straining act of endurance [...] The pat defense is that Skinamarink is not for conventional horror audiences, and that's obvious, but at the same time it feels overextended as a conceptual piece.

"[34] Slant Magazine's Chuck Bowen felt that the film's "spell is broken by its sheer, ungodly slowness, which springs from a paucity of ideas.

"[35] Seeing the works of Robert Bresson as one such influence, Bowen wrote: "Ball's innovation is to present such enjoyable hokum with a kind of Bressonian anti-naturalism, turning the proceedings austere and humorless.

[...] What this monotonous formalist exercise doesn't have, though, is Bresson's sense of how minute details reveal unexpected dimensions of a person's soul.

"[35] Cath Clarke of The Guardian professed to "being underwowed" by the film, calling it "a little undeserving of its newly acquired cult status" and lacking "enough ideas to stretch beyond a 10-minute short.