Some of the most intriguing and surprising movies of the last year have been low-budget horror movies such as Barbarian, X and Terrifier 2. The next movie to join these unexpected box office hits is Skinamarink, a social media viral success that brings a new horror to the found footage sub-genre and is already making waves at the box office since its Friday the 13th release.
Sinkamarink is certainly not a formulaic horror movie by any means, so its limited cinematic debut in just 692 theaters across the U.S. could have easily seen the film struggle to make any kind of impact. However, from its next-to-nothing $15,000 reported budget, the buzz around Sinkamarink has seen the film take an amazing $890,000 across the four-day weekend, almost 60 times its budget.
Horror movies have always been a box office win, and unlike many genres it is the one that filmmakers are willing to take a risk on, even if they have to do it on a fraction of the budget offered by big studios. Like many of the other indie successes of the last year, Skinamarink is a movie that probably shouldn’t make the kind of money it has, but something about these unconventional horrors just keep on pulling in the crowds. The synopsis of Skinamarink reads:
“Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party situation. They play well worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while it becomes clear that something is watching over them.”
How Childhood Terrors Inspired Skinamarink’s Creator To Make A Unique Horror Movie
Like most micro-budget movies, Skinamarink is all about suggestion, sounds, and creating unease from nothing much at all. Filmmaker Kyle Edward Bell took the inspiration for his debut feature from multiple comments made on his YouTube channel that showed one childhood terror that many seemed to share. He previously revealed:
"The most commonly shared one was basically the same concept: 'I'm between the ages of 6 to 10. I'm in my house. My parents are either dead or missing, and there's a threat I have to deal with.' I was interested in that because I have a vivid nightmare from that time, too. I thought it was amazing that almost everyone seems to have this dream, so I wanted to explore this thing. I just ran with it and turned it into a movie."
Skinamarink was surprisingly given a huge boost when a copy of the movie was unfortunately uploaded online. While pirating can usually put a dent a movie’s box office potential, for Skinamarink it turned the movie in a viral sensation, and that has seen it gain a successful theatrical release as well as a place on streaming service Shudder later in the year.