Movie reviews

The Reflecting Skin: a clear horizon and a bad theory

A clean line between sky and wheat gives Philip Ridley’s nightmare a misleading sense of order. Seth’s vampire theory does something similar with the people around him.

Whimsical Woes editorial ·

The scariest thing in The Reflecting Skin may be how tidy a bad explanation can look. Philip Ridley described wanting a firm horizon between the blue sky and the yellow wheat. Up above, one color; down below, another. The composition gives the eye a convincing division. Eight-year-old Seth tries to put a division just as neat through the people around him. That is where the trouble begins.

Ridley’s 1990 film gives Seth a neighbor, Dolphin Blue, who becomes the focus of his suspicions. Film Movement’s synopsis identifies a useful little chain: his father tells him about vampires, Seth puts a person in that story, and the return of his older brother gives him a reason to act on it. The problem is bigger than a boy being mistaken. A frightening explanation lets him feel helpful while giving Dolphin very little room to be a person.

The view keeps its composure

Ridley and cinematographer Dick Pope used the golden light near sunset, according to the director’s account of filming in Alberta. The preparation matters to this reading. The beauty took work and timing; it was a choice to make the world appear this persuasively ordered. A scene can be agitated in what it asks us to believe while remaining beautifully composed. The horizon stays put. It has no responsibility to warn us.

In the SciFiNow interview, Ridley recalls wanting the fields to feel claustrophobic. He and his collaborators even thought of the black Cadillac in the wheat through the visual idea of a shark crossing water. This is an unusually precise use of one dark moving shape. The field gives it space to travel, and gives the eye almost nowhere better to go. There is something nastier about that design than simply making a location look gloomy.

A guess with somebody inside it

Ridley also describes Seth assembling explanations from incomplete or misconnected information. The frame makes a good partner for that habit. A landscape can be visually complete even when the understanding within it is partial. Let that distinction sit for a while: the picture has enough evidence to look convincing, while the boy’s story about Dolphin has nowhere near enough evidence to treat her fairly.

That pressure comes with a cost. Staying near Seth’s interpretation gives Dolphin less room to correct how she is seen, and some viewers will want more time with the people he is busy explaining. The heightened performances and incidents can also feel too composed to inhabit if you want a restrained account of childhood. The film’s generous invitation is to look closely at its oddness; its more difficult demand is to stay close to a point of view that keeps doing harm.

The film is most useful as a lesson in putting pressure on a beautiful arrangement. A clean horizon can make a viewer feel oriented, while one traveling interruption turns it into a place to watch with concern. Just remember that the ability to see the whole field is a different accomplishment from understanding who belongs in the story.

Questions from the crypt

Is The Reflecting Skin a conventional vampire movie?

Seth suspects Dolphin of being a vampire, but the film uses that belief to examine how he explains people and events. Expect a dark fable with an uncertain viewpoint rather than a straightforward monster hunt. This review leaves the ending intact.

Where was The Reflecting Skin filmed?

Ridley describes being based in Calgary and finding the wheat fields and key houses in Alberta. Those locations stand in for the film’s imagined American farm country.

Why focus on the Cadillac in the wheat?

Ridley describes its movement using a shark comparison. It is a useful image for seeing how a single moving dark form can command an otherwise open composition.

Sources & further reading

Keep reading