In Their Skin
★★
(2012)
A near black and white colour palate and an unsettling introduction let you know straight off the bat that Jeremy Regimbal's debut thriller isn't going to end well. An archetypical set up which describes a car containing a family with a past winding up some country roads in their 4x4 to a house in the woods also screams the fact that In Their Skin might not be either ground breaking or unique. The bitter faced Selma Blair and Josh Close play Mary and Mark Hughes, a well off family cliché with a quiet son, who are looking for some time together to mourn the loss of their young daughter in a road traffic accident. When a demographically identical family turn up at the house to introduce themselves and Mark is pressured into having them over for dinner, In Their Skin takes a sinister tun.
Despite the immediate influence of Haneke's Funny Games and a glut of other creepy home invasion films over the last few years the film has a few of its own little twisted surprises. Blair and Close play Mark and Mary with a quiet intensity, giving James D'arcy, here playing Bob Sokowski enough room to disturb us undisturbed. But as the finale comes along so do most of the problems with thriller films of late and the weak drive to be a film of meaning hinders the all out terror that should ensue.
Regimbal isn't scribbling down an essay and making us read it at gun point like Haneke did, he's not going for all out scares and atmosphere like David Moreau and Xavier Palud's nail-biting Ils but seems content in sitting right in the middle. There is some heated discussions about class and wealth and an air of dinner party jealousy between thirty somethings; The tiniest of social commentary back bone for In Their Skin. So small in fact that Regimbal shouldn't have shot for the social angle at all.
It's well shot and the strangely cold cold colouring ends up working and although tense during the first half an hour, a weak ending, some lazy writing and a limp-wristed cathartic finale for Josh kills In Their Skin deader than the family dog.
