Spend enough time on YouTube and eventually the algorithm will cough up something that looks like a point-of-view shot of a nightmare — at once frustratingly mundane and compellingly inexplicable. These videos are all over the site, and typically feature creepily realistic digital images of an endlessly winding parking garage or a labyrinthine office corridor. Sometimes the ground is covered in pools of water. Sometimes a monster leaps from the shadows. And sometimes these hallways, basements and sub-basements just keep going, leading the viewer into a strange, liminal oblivion.
If you find those kinds of videos captivating and/or disturbing, you’re likely to love “Skinamarink.” Since its short run on the festival circuit last year, writer-director Kyle Edward Ball’s odd experiment in cinematic immersion has become a word-of-mouth sensation among horror connoisseurs — though it’s the kind of movie destined to baffle and irritate as many people as it beguiles.