Cold Skin (2017) – Review

A major question that has been raised in many a horror and science fiction stories is, “Who exactly are the monsters?” Now, going by such works as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Rod Serling’s The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, it’s pretty clear that mankind are the true monsters here — there being enough war and genocide to back up that statement — but this fact does not stop writers from returning to that well, over and over again, just in case we have forgotten that as a whole, mankind is a bit of a loss. This brings us to Xavier Gens’ 2017 movie Cold Skin, based on the Albert Sánchez Piñol novel of the same name, where we see two men face off against a monstrous force, before looking into the mirror to discover the truth.

As the movie opens, after giving us your standard horror movie quote by Nietzsche, we are introduced to our protagonist (David Oakes) — we never learn his true name, he is simply referred to as Friend — as he is being dropped off on a remote island in the South Atlantic. He is to take over the position as the resident meteorologist on the island, to apparently monitor wind and ocean currents, but Friend quickly learns that the man he was apparently replacing is now nowhere to be found, and the only other inhabitant on the island, a brutish lighthouse keeper named Gruner (Ray Stevenson) — whose lighthouse seems to have been converted into a medieval castle — tells Friend that the previous meteorologist had died of typhus. Now, any fan of the genre will almost immediately suspect that no one on this barren island is ever going to die of something as simple as typhus. Soon after, he discovers his predecessor’s journal, which documented strange amphibious creatures who attack from the sea, and included a quote stating that, “Darwin was wrong.” Friend, after reading this, soon finds himself under siege from a group of humanoid sea creatures.

“Is it too late to resign my commission?”

With twelve months until his relief ship is expected, Friend must make the best of things, so he tries to team-up with the misanthropic Gruner, who rebuffs him at first until Friend reveals that he has a rifle and about a thousand rounds of ammunition, which are the perfect ingredients for Gruner’s one-man war on the creatures he calls Toads. The big surprise to Friend is in the discovery that Gruner has not actually been living alone, that he cohabits in the lighthouse with a female creature (Aura Garrido) that he’s “tamed” and who he treats with equal measure as both pet and sex slave. Over the course of the film, Friend will form a relationship with the creature — dubbed “Aneris” (which is “a siren” spelled backwards) — but whether this particular relationship ever becomes sexual is left rather ambiguous, though Gruner does at times seem to become rather jealous, the script kind of abandons this thread so we don’t have to worry about that, and the three of them form a rather disturbing family.

“So…does she do windows as well?”

The Character of Gruner is equal parts Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, the marooned nutter Ben Gunn from Treasure Island, and Charlton Heston from The Omega Man, with his unwavering desire to see the extinction of this particular species, but we don’t really get much more than a glimpse into what kind of man he was before his time on the island — as in what drove him to take such an isolated job in the first place and why he wants to kill every single “Toad” he can get his hands on.  Friend does find a photograph showing that Gruner was once married, but what happened in that relationship remains a mystery, and as good as an actor Ray Stevenson is, the script doesn’t give him a lot to work with. We clearly aren’t meant to be too sympathetic to his character’s plight, as he is clearly physically and sexually abusing poor Aneris, but then we aren’t given much of a backstory to Friend either. In Albert Sánchez Piñol’s book, Friend was a disillusioned fighter for Irish independence, who took this position as a meteorologist to flee his brutal past, but in the movie, we have no idea what motivates him. He seems quite eager to join Gruner on his extinction plan, even after developing feelings for Aneris, which kind of skews his moral compass, and even though they did try and kill him first, they’ve been at war with Gruner for God knows how long, so you can’t really blame them for their “kill first” protocol when it comes to arriving humans.

“The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.”

The look of Cold Skin is a testament to cinematic bleakness, with overcast days followed by pitch black nights, and our cast of characters scrambling across windswept rocks in their attempts to not only survive this seemingly endless war, but to win it. Which brings us to my biggest problem with Cold Skin: the fact that this “war” has gone on for who knows how long, against a literal horde of these creatures who attack night after night, and should have realistically ended Gruner’s life ages ago. Even taking into consideration the fortifications he’s added to the lighthouse, wooden spikes and steel shutters, it’s made abundantly clear that Gruner in no way could survive this kind of overwhelming onslaught. Even worse is that the film gives no explanation as to why the creatures only attack at night; they clearly aren’t harmed by the sun’s rays, (like the mutants from The Omega Man), as we see Aneris wandering around in the daylight with no ill effects — she doesn’t even need to wear sunglasses. So the idea that these creatures, who we soon learn are quite intelligent, wouldn’t have ambushed him some time during one of his many daylight excursions to the spring for water is beyond ridiculous.

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

Then we get Friend finding a necklace that was worn by one of the sea creatures, which makes him realize that it’s possible that they aren’t simply mindless monsters to be slaughtered, and this would have made narrative sense if we hadn’t already seen him bond with Aneris. Did he think she was some kind of special aberration, that the rest of her kind were just soulless beasts? More egregious is the fact that the idea of these amphibious humanoids as “not simply monsters” was telegraphed from almost the beginning of the film; so a third act’s “startling reveal” just doesn’t work, and makes the whole “We were the monsters all along” theme fall flat on its face.

Note: We also get no clear reason as to why Aneris stays with the abusive Gruner, and I don’t buy his “whipped dog” analogy as she does continue to visit her “people,” so it’s not like she’s been ostracized by them.

Now there is a lot to enjoy when viewing Cold Skin; all three leads give fantastic performances, the make-up effects that turned the beautiful Aura Garrido into a fish person is simply marvelous, cinematographer Daniel Aranyó creates a mysterious world of light and shadow — one that really draws you in — and director Xavier Gens has a deft hand when it comes to the big action sequences. I just wish they’d done a few more passes on the script and polished off a few of those narrative rough spots.

This film would make an interesting prequel to The Shape of Water.