Nia DaCosta discusses Jonathan Glazer’s “disturbing” film ‘Under the Skin’
Horror remakes are usually received to pretty bad critical and commercial reception. ‘Why remake a classic’ one critic might say, or ‘This film ruined my childhood’, another disgruntled fan might say, but this was not the case for Nia DaCosta and her celebrated remake of Bernard Rose’s Candyman, with the film earning respect from the industry as a piece of genre cinema that tried to bring the titular character into the 21st century.
Remaining somewhat loyal to Rose’s original 1992 film, DaCosta added her modern edge to the reimagined film, heightening the racial subtext present throughout the old version. Adapting the movie with modern horror mastermind Jordan Peele in the producer’s chair, DaCosta told The Guardian: “I love horror and I felt like I had a really good idea about how to make something scary, but also I’m very measured, especially with a story like this, about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate”.
Paving a unique path, DaCosta is quickly becoming one of the most pertinent filmmakers working in the modern industry, with the young director soon to join Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) for her adaptation of The Marvels, starring Brie Larson, Zawe Ashton, Samuel L. Jackson.
Whilst it doesn’t seem like she has many intentions of returning to the genre anytime soon, DaCosta has left her mark and remains a lover of horror, even speaking to Ion Cinema back in 2019 to discuss some of her favourites. Including films from such names as Ridley Scott, Kelly Reichardt, Wong Kar Wai, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, there was one film more than any other that profoundly affected the director.
“It’s unlike anything I’d seen before and could remain opaque without being rudderless,” DaCosta said of Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 film Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson, which follows an alien who comes to earth to seduce young men in Scotland. Curious and strange, Glazer’s film is an experimental movie based on Michel Faber’s book of the same name, featuring distinctive and horrifying imagery.
Continuing in her praise of the film, DaCosta adds it’s “Incredibly moving and disturbing. Inspiring because it makes me feel as though, in film, one could do anything”.
Donning a scruffy black wig and an extravagant fur coat, Johansson’s unnamed protagonist is a strange shell of an individual in the film; an empty husk of infantile curiosity who prowls the streets of Glasgow searching for both prey and purpose. Having seen her peculiar origins at the start of the film, brought into existence through an ethereal biological process, she is not a malevolent being; rather, she’s a silent onlooker, a strange force of judgment.
Take a look at the trailer for Glazer’s iconic sci-fi, below.
