Under The Skin Clip Features Scarlett Johansson Picking Up Strange Men

By Rudie Obias | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Opening in a limited release in about a month, Jonathan Glazer’s return to directing features, Under The Skin, is one of our most anticipated movies of 2014. The strange science fiction film combines experimental techiniques with eerie improv from star Scarlett Johansson interacting with real people who unaware of who she was. While the making of Under The Skin was odd, the premise is even weirder, as you can see in this new clip.

A24 Films and Digital Spy released this video that perfectly illustrates the dark and gritty tone, while highlighting Johansson’s ability to command the screen. Just imagine, you’re walking down the street and a beautiful woman picks you up and takes you for a ride. She’s flirting with you, seduces you, and you go with her to a random motel room. While you think you’re about to get lucky, she violently kills you and mutilates your body for meat.

Under The Skin is expected to be as haunting and thoughtful as all of its trailers and movie posters suggests. Along with Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, the spring release cycle will provide some counter programming to people who aren’t interested in movies like Divergent, Transcendence, or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which opens on the same date as Under The Skin, and also stars Johansson.

The movie premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival to mixed reviews. Some critics compared Glazer’s work to Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Others felt the film was too pretensions for its own good. If you can glean anything from the clip above is that Under The Skin is a very challenging movie.

Recently, A24 Films released a poster that shows Johansson as a strange intergalactic artsy space alien. Designer Neil Kellerhouse made the impressive one sheet. His work can also be seen in posters for The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and I’m Still Here.

Dutch author Michel Faber wrote the book the movie is based on. It’s a dark social satire that lampoons big business and corporate farming, while also reaching into themes of sexual identity, humanity, and mercy. Once one of the premiere music video directors in the ’90s for British rock bands like Radiohead, Blur, and Jamiroquai, Glazer made the leap to feature films with Sexy Beast in 2000.

The art-house science fiction film follows an alien named Isserley (Johannson) who to Earth to pick up careless hitchhikers in Northern Scotland. Sexy and seductive, she lures in weary travelers, drugs, fattens, and mutilates them, and turns them into meat for an evil corporation back on her home planet. Human flesh is a delicacy for her race. Yummy!

Under The Skin hits theaters on April 4, 2014.

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