North
Atlantic, 1914. As the Great War is about to begin with its
bloodshed, a young weather scientist is taking his post on an
inhabited island for the period of one year. Since his predecessor is
nowhere to be found, and the only other human on the island is a
lighthouse technician named Gruner (Ray Stevenson, glimpsed in
Thor films) gone (slightly) mad, it seems it is going to be a
long year with not so much work to keep him busy and with his
collection of books and his log as the only company. What our
civilized nameless hero played by David Oakes (of TV series
The Borgias fame) does not know yet, is that the island is
infested with amphibian humanoid creatures swarming at night and
attacking both him and Gruner. Two men must form an alliance in order
to survive, but it is more complicated than it seems.
Written
by Jesús Olmo (known for 28 Weeks Later...) and Eron
Sheean and based on Albert Sanchéz Pinol’s
Spanish-language novel of the same name, Cold Skin is a
modestly budgeted Spanish-French co-production filmed in English with
intentions of global appeal. The film was directed by one of the
later-stages members of New French Extreme Cinema movement, Xavier
Gens who made his name with his debut Frontier(s) in 2007.
only to fall into the pattern of international mediocre genre
filmmaking with computer game adaptation Hitman (2007),
post-apocalyptic jump scare-fest The Divide (2011) and yet
another exorcism-themed movie The Crucifixion (2017). With
Cold Skin, Gens was more lucky than skillful to come at the
same time as Guillermo Del Torro’s The Shape of Water
and, sharing the topic of romance between humans and amphibians, to
serve as its companion piece.
The
trouble is that the film goes nowhere fast just as soon as the two
men team up to shoot the creatures from the top of the lighthouse.
They are both one-dimensional characters, with our hero being
somewhat humane and scientifically curious regarding the creatures
and Gruner being a misanthropic madman, speaking of himself in third
person and having openly genocidal tendencies while keeping one
female creature as his pet and sex slave. The endless shoot-outs
night after night with always the same type of dynamics between two
of them wears out its welcome pretty quickly, while the plot
developments towards the end of the film do not help much.
The
most intriguing part of the film, the creatures, are not being
explored in any way even if the writers and the director have one
specimen on disposal throughout the film. That female named Aneris
and played by underused Aura Garrido might be the most
interesting and complex character in the film, but is demoted to the
point of conflict between the two “frenemies” and even the
duality of romance and sexual exploitation serves only to make their
personalities more apart from one another.
The
context of WWI stays completely unused for other purposes than to
show us an array of equipment and weaponry from that period of time,
so the story could theoretically have taken place anytime between
Columbus and early Cold War. There is a metaphor of colonization and
exploitation somewhere (the same type of questions “are they humans
or are they animals” were popping out in the racial theories from
that period of time), with the WWI being the last colonial war, but
here it is a long shot.
Visually,
however, the film looks nice, with compelling special effects and
intelligent creature design. Cold Skin also profits from
location shooting on the black rocks of Lanzarote and Iceland and the
cinematography by Daniel Aranyó and production design by Gil
Parrondo belong to a better piece of filmmaking than this one.
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