A young boy is an outsider in his small town, hanging around in the woods behind the house where the adults run a taxidermy business. The boy likes a girl and wants to get to know her which he does when he finds her walking alone in the same woods, upset because her dog has died and has been buried. As they hang out he is able to use the grief to get beyond the social barriers between them.
OK, to talk about the elephant in the room here, the plot summary above features two very key facts: one that the boy is surrounded by taxidermy as a normal activity, and two that the girl he likes has just had her sick dog die. So you put these two facts together and you pretty much know where this short film is headed and I know for some people it will be a show-stopped that they realize this in about the fourth minute of a 12 minute short. However to me this plot is not a joke with a punch-line but rather a story and it is about the characters, not "I want to see what happens at the end". This puts a lot more pressure on the journey to be good though and here it is because I was engaged in the film throughout, even though I knew where it was heading.
The boy as an outsider is clear and his sweet but unintentionally dark actions make sense, albeit grisly sense. The outsider thing combines with the "misguided intentions" aspect to make the impact of the rejection of his offer all the more powerful and as a viewer I felt for him while also understanding why things went wrong. The film looks and sounds great throughout but Spiro's biggest achievement is with the child actors. Both the boy and the girl are totally natural and really hit the characters spot on – the boy in particular really seems perfectly cast.
Skin may well be pretty obvious as to where it is going from about a third of the way in, but to me the journey is so well done and so engaging with the natural and convincing characters that I really didn't mind, because it wasn't "how will it end" that kept me watching, but rather the people and their stories.
OK, to talk about the elephant in the room here, the plot summary above features two very key facts: one that the boy is surrounded by taxidermy as a normal activity, and two that the girl he likes has just had her sick dog die. So you put these two facts together and you pretty much know where this short film is headed and I know for some people it will be a show-stopped that they realize this in about the fourth minute of a 12 minute short. However to me this plot is not a joke with a punch-line but rather a story and it is about the characters, not "I want to see what happens at the end". This puts a lot more pressure on the journey to be good though and here it is because I was engaged in the film throughout, even though I knew where it was heading.
The boy as an outsider is clear and his sweet but unintentionally dark actions make sense, albeit grisly sense. The outsider thing combines with the "misguided intentions" aspect to make the impact of the rejection of his offer all the more powerful and as a viewer I felt for him while also understanding why things went wrong. The film looks and sounds great throughout but Spiro's biggest achievement is with the child actors. Both the boy and the girl are totally natural and really hit the characters spot on – the boy in particular really seems perfectly cast.
Skin may well be pretty obvious as to where it is going from about a third of the way in, but to me the journey is so well done and so engaging with the natural and convincing characters that I really didn't mind, because it wasn't "how will it end" that kept me watching, but rather the people and their stories.
