COLD SKIN (2017)

Studio:       Samuel Goldwyn Films
Director:    Xavier Gens
Writer:       Jesus Olmo
Producer:  Denise O’Dell, Mark Albela
Stars:     Ray Stevenson, David Oakes, Aura Garrido, John Benfield, Winslow M. Iwaki, Alejandro Rod, Ivan Gonzalez, Ben Temple

Review Score:

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Summary:

A weather official stranded on a remote island with a strange lighthouse keeper uncovers a disturbing evolutionary secret.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In September 1914, Captain Axel transports a man referred to as Friend to a remote island where Friend is to replace Aldor Vigeland as the lone weather official. Upon arriving, Axel’s small steamship crew finds no sign of Vigeland in the cabin where he is quartered.

Axel and Friend investigate the nearby lighthouse. The island’s only other inhabitant, grizzled maritime signal technician Gruner, claims that Vigeland died of typhus.

Axel leaves Friend to serve his 12-month term in solitude. Friend takes up residence in the cabin where he finds a journal belonging to Vigeland. Alongside drawings of strange hybrid creatures, Friend finds the sentence “Darwin was wrong.” Friend also finds a photograph of Vigeland’s wife.

Through binoculars, Friend spots an unknown figure atop the lighthouse with Gruner. That night, Friend is forced to hide when an amphibious creature breaks into his cabin. Friend tries speaking to Gruner about the encounter the next morning, but Gruner refuses to allow Friend inside the lighthouse.

Concerned about another attack, Friend boards up his cabin’s windows and arms himself with a gun. At nightfall, a full horde of creatures descends upon Friend’s cabin. During the confrontation, Friend ignites a fire ring around the perimeter to repel the creatures, but ends up burning down most of his cabin in the process.

In the light of day, Friend spots a docile female creature whom he later names Aneris by a waterfall. Friend prepares to shoot Aneris when Gruner stops him at gunpoint and explains that she is harmless. Friend forces Gruner to lower his weapon. The two men eventually calm.

Friend offers provisions and ammunition in exchange for Gruner allowing him to begin boarding in the lighthouse. Friend learns that Gruner domesticated Aneris and also uses her for sex. Gruner posits that the creatures are demons from Atlantis who want to kill humans. When Friend asks why Gruner didn’t take the opportunity to leave on Axel’s ship, Gruner resignedly explains that he has nowhere to go.

Gruner instructs Friend to get a rifle and join him atop the lighthouse to fend off a nightly attack from the creatures. Aneris begins howling rhythmically. Gruner fires a flare. Hundreds of creatures emerge from the water and descend upon the tower. As Gruner shoots and stabs at the climbing creatures, Friend freezes from shellshock and retreats inside the lighthouse. Friend faints.

Gruner berates Friend when he recovers the following day. When the creatures attack that evening, Gruner tells Friend he has one chance to redeem himself. Gruner locks Friend outside atop the tower and forces him to fight alone. To Gruner’s surprise, Friend survives.

Gruner and Friend settle into a routine of regularly battling the creatures at nightfall for several months. Friend develops an affinity for Aneris, although Gruner continues to abuse her.

Engrossed in a chess game, the two men are caught off guard by a creature attack. Overrun, Friend and Gruner lock themselves inside the lantern room for safety. Gruner suffers a gruesome leg injury while retreating. The men survive when the creatures return to the sea at daybreak.

Friend sees a passing steamship in the distance. Gruner physically assaults Friend to stop Friend from firing a flare. Aneris growls at Gruner for attacking Friend, which angers Gruner. Friend accuses Gruner of purposefully facilitating his own self-destruction and pitiable lifestyle.

Friend hears Gruner beating Aneris. Friend comforts Aneris afterward and teaches her what a boat is. Aneris shows Friend where an overturned rowboat is beached.

Gruner explains that the rowboat came from Portuguese traders who were shipwrecked before the creatures killed them. Friend suggests using a dive suit and the rowboat to salvage dynamite from the sunken ship. Gruner refuses to assist Friend’s plan.

After spying Friend bathing with Aneris, Gruner agrees to row Friend to the wreck and operate the dive lines. Gruner and Friend retrieve several boxes of dynamite. Underwater, a creature child knocks down Friend. Friend tugs the rope, but Gruner does not pull him up. Friend is forced to release his metal suit and swim up to the boat in frigid waters.

The men plant dynamite around the lighthouse perimeter. Friend warns Gruner about placing dynamite too close to the tower.

Winter snow begins falling. The creatures do not attack for several weeks, although Gruner continues to wait outside with the detonator. Friend forces Gruner to come inside for warmth. Friend disconnects the detonator for safety.

Confused and paranoid about the lack of an attack, Gruner beats Aneris while accusing her of acting as a spy for the creatures. Friend intervenes.

Gruner compels Friend to help him stage an ambush by luring the creatures inside the lighthouse. Friend obliges and the creatures finally attack. However, Gruner finds that the detonator is disconnected. Friend reconnects the fuse as the creatures swarm both men atop the tower. Gruner detonates the dynamite. Dozens of creatures are destroyed, but Gruner and Friend are knocked unconscious because of the blast’s proximity.

Gruner and Friend recover the next day to discover that Aneris ran away in the aftermath of the battle. Friend sees Aneris swimming with a creature child over the shoreline. Friend builds a stone circle with a toy boat made of bone on the beach.

Friend finds a photo revealing that Gruner is actually Aldor Vigeland, the weather official he was to replace. Friend realizes that Gruner condemned himself to a life of isolation following the death of his beloved wife.

Friend greets Aneris and the creature child when they come to his stone circle on the beach. A horde of creatures follows behind Aneris, but does not attack.

Gruner arrives with a gun. Friend says that Gruner was wrong about the creatures being hostile and reasons that they want a truce. Gruner demands that Aneris return to the lighthouse. When she refuses, Gruner has an emotional breakdown, rambling about himself in third person before running away.

Friend returns to trying to communicate with Aneris. From atop the lighthouse, Gruner suddenly fires a flare that kills the creature child. Aneris and the other creatures retreat.

Friend rushes to the lighthouse to confront Gruner. Following a fight in which Gruner beats Friend, Gruner chooses to not deliver a killing blow. Instead, Gruner walks outside and willingly submits to a swarm of creatures that tear him apart.

Some time later, a naval officer brings a new weather official to the island to replace Friend. Posing as Gruner, and having assumed the former lighthouse keeper’s grizzled appearance and disposition, Friend claims that Friend died of typhus. Friend commits to remaining on the island instead of taking the opportunity to leave. Aneris swims in the sea nearby.

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Review:

Relative to the mutton-chopped sailors with sun-leathered skin aboard the same steamship, ‘Friend’ (it’s what Ray Stevenson’s character later chooses to call him, and ‘Friend’ doesn’t deem another name necessary) can be considered baby-faced.  Unsullied idealism widens optimistic eyes further.  His is a candle aching to be extinguished once Friend faces the harsh realities waiting at his dreary destination.

It’s September 1914.  Friend has accepted a post on a remote island where he is to replace the lone weather official for a 12-month period of solitude and wind charting.  Curiously, the man he is meant to relieve is nowhere to be found.  The island’s only other inhabitant, a grizzled lighthouse keeper who refers to himself in third person as Gruner, claims typhus took the meteorologist.  Gruner’s couldn’t-care-less social skills (he greets Friend with nothing on his body but the sea breeze) have no interest in elaborating.

The transport vessel sails away, leaving Friend alone in the weather official’s former cabin.  There, Friend finds a journal of exposition scribed by his predecessor.  “Darwin was wrong,” warns the diary.  Inked illustrations of amphibious creatures accompany those ominous words.  During a predictable jump scare moment, of which “Cold Skin” thankfully has few, Friend gets a firsthand glimpse at one of these hybrid grotesqueries when it peeks through a peephole into Friend’s hiding place. 

Friend’s second run at getting info out of Gruner doesn’t go any better than the first. Doomed to his own devices, Friend retreats to his wood-walled abode and arms up against a second attack.  This time, a horde of fearsome frogmen descends on the domicile, forcing Friend to survive by burning it to the ground.

Desperate for shelter, Friend strikes a deal with Gruner to billet in the lighthouse only to discover he isn’t the grim man’s only roommate.  Gruner domesticated a female creature he keeps as both a pet and a concubine.  There’s little time to mull over the meaning of that relationship however.  The invasion Friend repelled 24 hours ago is about to begin again, as it does every nightfall when the frogmen assault the lighthouse.  Documenting tide levels suddenly became an inconsequential concern.  Friend has unknowingly allied himself with two equally yet differently strange participants in an interspecies conflict he never imagined possible.

To a lesser extent because of its first-person narration, to a greater extent because of its origin as author Albert Sanchez Pinol’s 2002 novel, “Cold Skin” emanates a literary aura.  The awfulness of loneliness coupled with Innsmouth insinuations wraps Lovecraftian themes within gothic Mary Shelley melodrama.  Director Xavier Gens’ adaptation weaves a movie about mankind and monsters (who is the bigger beast?) from atmosphere more than action, another chief contributor to the library-like tone.

Setting, setup, and the parentage of a French and Spanish coproduction season a vaguely British feel with foreign flavors that tease arthouse ambiance.  “Cold Skin” doesn’t succumb to the stuffiness of too much suggestive suspense or romanticized horror however, as Gens finds filmic ways to mix mood with traditional creature feature trappings as well as spectacle.

Transporting us to icy isolation alongside the two men and their unlikely companion requires immersion achieved with setpieces made more impressive by being born of a modest budget.  Close-ups occasionally reveal stone lighthouse blocks as the kind of foam rocks Disneyland uses to decorate dark rides.  But when the camera submerges beneath frigid waters for a breathless deep dive, or amplifies an engulfed cabin illuminating darkness with a bright blaze, “Cold Skin” gives off the cinematic scent of an overachieving effort that cares not for the constraints of its checkbook, and is better off for exploiting that ego.  The film has both, yet inspired scenes outweigh forced ones to create a textural fantasy an invested audience can truly feel.

Ray Stevenson and David Oakes mirror that push-pull between inspired and forced while sharing the main spotlight.  Stevenson has scenes where his “I don’t want to be here” attitude could come as much from the actor as it does from his character.  More often than not by a mile, Stevenson’s steeliness capably sells Gruner’s exterior gruffness in addition to his interior torment.  Oakes has the less complicated arc, doing a fine enough job of alternating between meek and militant as mandated by the plot’s progression.

Aura Garrido sneakily steals the show from both men as Aneris, the web-footed woman from the sea.  One movie makes it too soon to crown her as competition for Andy Serkis or to put her in the running for Doug Jones’ female counterpart.  But Garrido’s animalistic motions mixed with humanistic emotions are as good as it gets for creature performers.  Without her mesmeric work, “Cold Skin” couldn’t chew the introspective content it bites off to mull over between mouthfuls of monster mayhem.

The alpha male confrontation doesn’t make for the most sustainably engaging narrative dynamic.  Neither does repetitive exposition provided by copious quieter moments.  When Xavier Gens remembers to save some of the energy applied to frenzied CGI sequences though, he instills his movie with infectiously imaginative fiction.  It bears the weight of its printed page DNA in places it shouldn’t.  Yet “Cold Skin” captures coldness, creepiness, and cerebral tension in amounts that equal enticing entertainment.

Review Score:  70

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