Under The Skin Gets A New Trailer And A New Poster
This article is more than 2 years old
While Scarlett Johansson is enjoying the critical success of starring in an Academy Award nominated film in Spike Jonze’s Her, the 29-year-old actress will soon be featured in another offbeat science fiction movie from another music video director. This time it’s Jonathan Glazer and the movie is Under The Skin, and it has a new trailer and poster.
The new film is an oddity, to say the least. So far, everything we’ve seen makes it look like one of the most artistic, and strangest, movies to be released this year (along with Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac). It seems like Under The Skin, one of our most anticipated movies of the year, is going to be the type of film that isn’t easily pleasing to watch at first, but through re-watching the movie, you’d slowly understand what it’s about.
The trailer above is a bit of clever storytelling in itself. The series of images features Johansson’s character, an alien named Isserley, coming to Earth. She is sent to here to pick up careless hitchhikers in Northern Scotland. Sexy and seductive, she lures weary travelers, drugs, fattens, and mutilates her victims, turning them into meat for an evil corporation back on her home planet. Human flesh is a delicacy for her race.
From the sheer style and tone of the trailer, it seems that Glazer is channeling directors Nicolas Roeg and Stanley Kubrick. His movie has flashes of Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, along with traces of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hopefully, Under The Skin is not just an exercise in style, but also a movie that features a story that is deeper and compelling to watch.
The film’s new poster is actually pretty great. A talented designer named Neil Kellerhouse created the one sheet, which incorporates some of the film’s eeriness and oddness. Kellerhouse also designed the movie posters for David Fincher’s The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragoon Tattoo, and the “documentary” I’m Still Here.
Glazer is no slouch. He was one of the premiere music video directors in the ’90s for British rock bands like Radiohead, Blur, and Jamiroquai, before making the leap to feature films with Sexy Beast in 2000 and Birth in 2004. Since then, he’s directed commercials for Sony, Motorola, and Stella Artois, making Under the Skin his first feature film in 10 years.
Dutch author Michel Faber wrote the book Under the Skin. It’s a dark social satire that lampoons big business and corporate farming, while also reaching into themes of sexual identity, humanity, and mercy. The sci-fi novel was also on the prestigious Whitbread Awards shortlist for Best First Novel in 2000.
Recently, Under The Skin’s red-band trailer was released, which really teases what audiences should expect from the sci-fi film more so than the trailer above. The red-band trailer is disturbing and strange, while it has a certain texture that will keep you uneven. It’s something to experience, but be warned, there’s nothing conventional about it.
Under The Skin hits theaters on April 4, 2014. This is the same date of Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which also features Scarlett Johansson, as Black Widow this time. Don’t get the two movies confused when you go to the movie theater.
