Under the Skin

That was a perfect movie for me to watch with the folks of the Cologne Film Club. It has been silently sitting in my collection for years without me procuring the capacity to watch it; too many things surrounding the creation of the film had built up a feeling of complexity and profundity that may be hard to stomach on a typical movie night. But that’s what a film club is for: Watching weird shit that you don’t have to apologize to your friends and family for afterwards while still being surrounded by like-minded and approachable people to dump your initial WTFs onto once the credits roll. What it says on the tin is science fiction, hint of horror, arthouse (A24-distributed), Scarlett Johansson as an alien in Scotland that preys on men walking home alone at night. After the first third of the film, this gimmick gives way to something much deeper, though. Immigration? A reminder that we are all the same, despite where we’re from? Feminism and misogyny? Empathy as a core capacity of…