In My Skin

Very light on plot and character, but who cares? From that scene where she wakes up after sleeping on her arm and stares at her numb limb as if it were something completely alien, I'm hooked. One long slow descent into the ultimate question of body horror - who am I, if not this flawed machine of meat?

Simple-yet-effective, almost-minimalist body horror coming out of the early 2000s New French Extremism tradition. Seems to suggest madness through information overload as a result of advanced globalization-literalized-as-self-destruction, but doesn't delve deeply enough into its sociopolitical contextual undertones to make its commentary entirely potent. Aesthetically, it sits just above made-for-TV quality.

This chick is as mad as a brush.

Puts a horrifying face on addiction. Unfortunately this particular addiction seems to appear outta nowhere with no justifiable origin. Worse than that, the film just kinda fizzles out. It was well on its way to being the most disturbing piece of cinema I'd ever seen, but meh.

This was an extremely interesting and rather disturbing body horror movie. While most films depict a linear progression to madness and self destruction, the self-mutilation here starts out as literal self-hatred but as the severity of the 'madness' progresses it turns into love of oneself and outright passion.

An effectively cringe-inducing piece of body horror. What I appreciate most is how difficult the cutting scenes are to watch despite the fact they're not very graphic. The unflinching realism with which the scenes are shot and de Van's great acting do the job flawlessly. When all's said and done the movie feels unsubstantial, and I can't help but feel deprived of a more eventful conclusion. But I also can't think of too many other movies that almost, ALMOST, make me cover my eyes.

The subtitles were fine. The movie messes with your mind. Pretty stark filming for a lot of parts. The movie is a really interesting take on the premise. Hits you psychologically too.

this movie was strange and ultimately pointless. the characters were completely undeveloped as was the plot. in terms of plot, the story seemed to lack cause-and-effect. the ending as well was a huge letdown. I'm all for open-endings, but only when they're done to serve the story, and only when the filmmakers have a clear idea of what they want to convey through it.

I find it very flawed (the dinner table scene in particular, though also it can feel tacky at points and I'm not completely convinced by the lead female's performance in the more normal scenes) yet I also find it so disturbing and utterly effective that I can kind of half forgive its flaws. I love the split-screen scene, which puts you right in the main character's head by completely disorientating you and overloading your senses with information. The film is a fairly horrifying experience.

Don't really think I was in the mood for this when I watched it and found myself losing interest fairly early on. So it might be a better movie on a rewatch, but I was pretty bored this time around.

Top badass moment? In the words of the Smiths, "I tried but I failed". There're no characters in this movie with enough redeeming qualities to qualify them as badass. They weren't exactly bad, but none had that self-sacrificing 'hero quality' that I was looking for. Move along now, nothing to see here; just a lot of flawed humans. 0 cats and 0 decapitations.

"How "numb" do you have to be in order not to know that you've seriously injured yourself?" - Ed Gonzalez

A movie about addiction shown in an extreme fashion.