Remember when you were very little and woke up in the middle of the night? And you searched in the dark for something familiar, arms outstretched, perhaps calling out for a parent. And every sound and light became exaggerated in the night’s emptiness, and the imagery of your most recent nightmare lingered in your half-asleep mind, reframing reality in disturbing ways. And though you probably only took a few steps or even sleepwalked, it felt like you had traversed a vast dreamscape fraught with terrors waiting to consume you. Skinamarink, named after the nursery rhyme, explores this singular concept. An experiment in analog horror, Canadian filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball crowdfunded his first feature into an intentionally paced and directed debut, released theatrically by IFC Midnight and the streamer Shudder. Although the minimalist film is admirably conceived and executed, the question is whether you have the patience for this sort of thing. The deliberate tempo and scarcity of narrative information may test your patience, as it did mine, even as you appreciate Ball’s evident skill, aesthetic confidence, and commitment to his conceptual intentions.

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