Horror in the 90s: 'The Reflecting Skin'

The Reflecting Skin (1991)

Directed by Phillip Ridley

Written by Phillip Ridley

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Cooper

Release Date June 28th, 1991

Box Office $17,042

The Reflecting Skin is a horror movie of such modesty and subtlety that you may not realize its a horror movie. The horror of The Reflecting Skin only emerges as you immerse yourself into the sun soaked, over-saturated visuals that accompany a horror story that bubbles and bubbles to a boiling point of psychological horror. And all of it comes from the naive and mischievous perspective of an 8 year old boy who, perhaps, doesn't recognize the actual horror that he's witnessing. He's an unreliable narrator simply for his lack of life experiences.

The Reflecting Skin centers its story on 8 year old Seth Dove. Seth is a precocious little kid with a sociopathic streak slowly being revealed. One of the earliest scenes shows Seth finding a large toad, blowing a straw into its backside, blowing the toad up like a balloon. To make matters worse, Seth places the toad on the side of a walking path where a woman happens to be returning home from gathering supplies. When the woman leans over to check on the poor toad, Seth uses his slingshot to explode the poor creature all over this poor woman.

That poor woman is Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan), a widow who is grieving the relatively recent death of her husband by suicide. Left alone to tend a large wheat farm, Dolphin is in over head and already suffering a mental health crisis, even before the exploding toad. When Seth's mother forces him to go to Dolphin's farm so that Seth can apologize, the two have a terrifyingly awkward encounter in which Dolphin gifts Seth a whaling harpoon and proceeds to break down in sobs while telling the story of her lost love. The breakdown causes Seth to flee in fear.

Through the convoluted imagination of childhood, Seth comes to believe that Dolphin is a vampire. This coincides with the shocking murder of one of Seth's young friends, a death that Seth eagerly links to Dolphin, though not with any proof. He also doesn't share his suspicion regarding his neighbor out of fear of being punished by his mother for further antagonizing Dolphin. Suspicion eventually falls on Seth's father, Luke Dove (Duncan Fraser), whose past includes having been busted while carrying on a relationship with another man. Just potentially being a homosexual is enough to make Luke a suspect in the Idaho of the late 1940s and early 50s.

This leads to a shocking scene of violence as Luke takes his own life in the most horrific fashion. Seth is forced to watch it all happen but, being 8 years old, he seems not to understand the full gravity of what his father has done. Luke's death does lead to one good thing, the return of Seth's older brother, Cameron Dove (Viggo Mortensen) having been part of the nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll in the wake of the second world war, Cameron is haunted, gaunt, and perhaps ill from his experience. In a scene of telling power, Cameron shows Seth a striking photo of someone who was too close to a nuclear weapon blast. It's a child whose skin has been turned to a glass like sheen, one where you can see your reflection in the child's skin.

The full breadth of the horror of this idea is left to your imagination and that's indicative of most of The Reflecting Skin. Much of the true horror, the violence and death, happens off screen. You are left to imagine the agony of the victims, especially the murdered children. You are also left with Seth's ill-formed imagination, one where the actual horrors he's witnessing aren't quite becoming clear to him. That streak of sociopathy I mentioned earlier means both he and us are left only to imagine for ourselves just how horrific this story truly is.

As Cameron begins a tentative romance with Dolphin, Seth's sociopathic tendencies, his fear of Dolphin and her broad, well worn emotional state, leads Seth to a terrifying moment that will come to define the final, agonizing moments of The Reflecting Skin. Imagining that Dolphin is some form of Vampire and that she may be sucking the life out of his brother, who coincidentally is suffering from radiation poisoning, provides context to the final moments of The Reflecting Skin that are horrific in their implications and in how the horror is revealed.

The unsettling look of The Reflecting Skin is perhaps the lasting legacy of the film. Cinematographer Dick Pope, whose work with such legends as Mike Leigh, Richard Linklater, and John Sayles, goes out of his way to make the wheat fields of Idaho pop on screen. The setting becomes a character in the movie, the bright yellows, browns, and the orange sunlight, create an unsettlingly bright horror movie. Pope's crisp, bright and unnerving visuals create a sense of unease visually that feeds into the unease coming from the story of The Reflecting Skin.

Deaths set against the gorgeous American Gothic backdrop of a rural American setting, become even more haunting and horrifying in this presentation. The Reflecting Skin is a gorgeous looking movie on top of being a psychological nightmare where the horrors are directed into your subconscious and emerge in your mind as you imagine what these characters are actually living through. It's a bold, unsettling and brilliant way to craft a modern horror movie and renders The Reflecting Skin a hidden gem of the genre.

This is a serialized review from my book project, Horror in the 90s. I am working my way through each of the theatrically released horror movies of the 1990s, and a few other notable titles, to craft a book that will capture the essence of the horror genre in the 1990s. But, I cannot complete this journey on my own. If you'd like to help me bring Horror in the 90s to life, you can make a monthly pledge here on Vocal or you can leave a one time tip, also here on Vocal. All the money will go to support the creation of Horror in the 90s. Thanks!