The problem with adaptations is that if the viewer didn’t read the book, or the viewer isn’t familiar with the director’s work, then the viewer has no way to know whose fault it is so he or she can steer clear of the author or the director in the future. I added Cold Skin based on the description without realizing that it was a period piece or an adaptation of a Spanish novel. The summary evoked memories of John Carpenter’s The Thing. I love anything set in a cold wilderness then add strange creatures, and I’m completely in. Also I’m a fan of Ray Stevenson, who is a better actor than his resume would indicate.
Cold Skin is about a young man who is eager to leave civilization and voluntarily agrees to man a scientific station in Antarctica, but no one is aware what happens at night and the last man disappeared. There is a wild looking man in the lighthouse, and he isn’t exactly forthcoming about what is going on, but after one night, the young man finds out. Humanoids emerge from the ocean and try to kill them every night. The young man looks for aid from the lighthouse man, but discovers that working with him comes with plenty of unsavory moral compromises, and he begins to question the morality of the conflict instead of simply seeing it as a struggle for survival.
It was fairly early in the movie when I realized that Cold Skin wasn’t purely sci fi fun, but a more somber existential take on the mutability of identity in the face of conflict. I was completely annoyed when I realized that the newcomer would never get a name. I fully expected the ending as soon as the movie introduced us to Stevenson’s character. The goal of the movie seems to use the humanoids and the Antarctic men as a metaphor for colonialism and the inhumanity of man to other men who are different. Choosing to tell the movie from the newcomer’s point of view may accomplish that task since the viewer relates to him and experiences his journey of initially seeing them as monsters then gradually adjusting as he learns more about them, but just because he sees them as other does not mean that the movie has to depict them as other from the beginning. Until almost near the end of the movie, other than one humanoid character, there is nothing to objectively distinguish them from the homicidal horde in Ghosts of Mars, Vampires or Assault on Precinct 13. It is a siege movie first, and a philosophical movie second when it needs to be the reverse.
Cold Skin is a great idea, but the execution is repulsive and redundant.
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Think rapey The Shape of Water with the psychological dynamic of Ex Machina except the woman has no ulterior motive. The whole movie descends into a young versus old man dance off about who is dominant a la Heart of Darkness, and the movie seems ambivalent about her role when there really should not be unless the filmmaker was trying to depict Stockholm’s Syndrome, which I do not believe that he was. Stevenson plays it straight-it is rape and abuse. In the first rape scene (or sex scene depending on your perspective) that the newcomer witnesses, she puts her hand on lighthouse dude’s back to imply a consensual element. Later on she is seen as somewhat seductive while simultaneously not trying to play them off each other, but as if she had an organic attraction to the newcomer.
I’m not saying that one character could not embody all these moments credibly, and I’m not blaming Aura Garrido, who does a fantastic job as Aneris and probably received the direction to play her character in that manner, I’m just saying maybe get a chick or two to write the Smurfette character because I’m fairly sure that if you are held in captivity, getting raped daily by some weird looking dude (remember human beings would look weird to her, not normal) who also physically and psychologically abuses you, then spend all night screaming at the top of your lungs, what little free time you have left isn’t spent mooning over the other weird looking dude.
Cold Skin does not do an effective job of depicting its one female character. She is mainly defined by her relationship to the men, especially how they see her, but I have no sense of what kind of person she was when there were no manned stations in Antarctica other than she has dignity, would like not to be abused and prefers to be nude. I have no idea what life will be like for her after she is free. When she reclaims her freedom and identity, it seemed abrupt, sudden and unearned although it was a relief. She went from cowering in fear to standing proud and defiant in the face of a threat as the spokesperson for her people. Maybe that is who she always was, and it is implied with the nightly assault that she must be someone important, but there are no hints or gradual transitions. Take all the complaints about Sansa’s rape scene in Game of Thrones and put them right here. Her pain is really about the newcomer’s emasculation in the face of the lighthouse dude’s brutality and his powerlessness to stop it.
Just because Cold Skin is set in 1914 does not mean that it has to echo the sensibilities of that time. You can’t separate the evils of civilization, specifically colonialism, without depicting rape so I applaud the story for tackling that issue head on, but while urging viewers to see the humanity in those that are different from you, it may help to depict the humanity of those that are different, especially women, instead of just treating them as a personification of a male character’s psychological dilemma. I’m not saying that was the intention, but I am saying that was the result.
Also Cold Skin offers a valid, but messed up lesson about humanity and colonialism. Human beings can only see humanity in the other through sexual attraction or vulnerability, i.e. children, not in other men who will only be seen as a threat that must be eliminated. To put it in vulgar terms, if a person can’t fuck it or play with it, then a human will want to destroy it.
Cold Skin fails spectacularly at carrying out its mission. You can take the man out of civilization, but you can’t take civilization out of the man. Civilization isn’t so civilized, but neither is this movie that fails to imbue the other with the same investment that it gives its unnamed main character.