Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Cold Skin' (2017)

SPOILERS!!!

I have to start early with the spoilers because there's no talking about this movie while dancing around the fact that both male leads fuck a fish woman. That's kind of the whole plot, really. A lighthouse keeper just wants to tend his lighthouse and fuck his fishwife. Only problem is, the fishwife's relatives keep showing up trying to kill the lighthouse keeper. What's a guy to do other than arm himself to the teeth and make his lighthouse a fortress. That's seriously the whole plot. What this one guy is willing to do so he can keep fucking his fishwife. I get that this guy is an obsessive prick but I'm not sure anyone's that obsessive. I mean, this guy goes to war a couple times every month just to keep fucking his fishwife. At some point he'd have to tap out. I'm flat-out shocked he isn't dead. Defending the lighthouse is a serious job and every time is a near-death situation where he almost loses.

Seriously, this movie starts out with the lighthouse keeper getting resupplied with a second set of hands and another gun and in the first night's attack they almost lose the lighthouse. Every fucking fight is like that. At one point they get so overwhelmed they lock themselves inside the lighthouse cupola and it's basically only because the creature can't break the glass that they get spared. Like, this guy could not have held up by himself for at least a year since the last supply. But that's what we're expected to believe. All so this guy can fuck his fishwife.

I was really hoping for something more like The Lighthouse (2019). That this would be a downward spiral into madness over what a guy would do to fuck his fishwife. I mean, if this guy is gonna live his life that close to the edge just for some fishpussy, let's go fucking nuts. This should have been some deeply psychological shit to really delve into. I mean, when the second guy starts fucking the fishwife, it should have just all gone downhill from there. There could be some truly psychotic love triangle that melts down into a violent jealous rage where these two guys are killing each other over fishpussy. Like, what if the fishwife was all in their head and shit, like a siren or something. Like, this is all just some kind of fucked up mating ritual and the fishwife is just trying to select the strongest male. How fucked would that be? I mean, we're fucking fish people here, let's go all the fucking way in.

I don't know. What we get instead is a drawn-out action movie with a lame ending. This movie deserved to end with the two guys killing each other, one way or another. Instead, the lighthouse keeper just gives himself to the hoard and they kill him. Like, they finally get into the fight we're all expecting, the lighthouse keeper gets the upper hand and we're expecting him to kill the other guy, but the other guy is just like "You're not a murderer!" and he just gives up and feeds himself to the hoard outside. Really? Not a murderer? There were supposed to be two guys originally on that island but the light housekeeper let the fish people eat him. He literally probably did that so he could keep his fishwife to himself. He also left the new guy out to die and seemed pretty cool about it. I get the feeling that he was pretty much just waiting for a reason to kill the new guy. But sure, completely enraged, jealous over his singular obsession, after getting stabbed in the shoulder, yeah sure he wouldn't kill him. OF COURSE HE WOULD FUCKING KILL HIM!!! It wouldn't even be a question. This guy, for sure, is a murderer. He would fight monthly hoards of fish people for some fishpussy, he would FOR SURE murder a guy for fishpussy.

Honestly, there's a lot about this movie that doesn't make much sense. Little scenes like that where the characters' behavior seem counterintuitive to the established plot. Which is why I think my subtle plot change would have made this movie so good. Seriously, what if the fishwife was manipulating everything as a weird mating ritual? What if that fishpussy was toxic and that shit was getting in their heads, making them obsessed with defending their fishwife? That would have been so good. Way better than what we got.

So, do I recommend this movie? I don't know, that ending really had no fucking backbone. I'm going to keep hammering this point, we're already having sex with fish, go balls-deep into madness with it. Don't sugarcoat the ending. But yeah, I guess there's still a pretty decent movie before the crappy ending. I guess Hardcore Horror Heads only. Knock yourselves out.