Released in 2013, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin stands as one of the most haunting, formally audacious, and deeply philosophical science fiction films of the 21st century. Loosely adapted from Michel Faber’s satirical 2000 novel of the same name, Glazer strips away the book’s overt exposition regarding corporate capitalism and factory farming. What remains is a sparse, visually intoxicating tone poem about identity, empathy, gender dynamics, and the visceral nature of the human condition.
By utilizing guerrilla filmmaking tactics and contrasting an otherworldly narrative against the harsh realism of working-class Scotland, Under the Skin forces its audience to perceive the mundane elements of our world through entirely alien eyes.
The Narrative Structure: From Predator to Prey
The plot of Under the Skin operates with minimalist restraint, choosing structural repetition and atmospheric dread over conventional dialogue.
The Setup and the Hunt
The film follows an unnamed extraterrestrial entity, credited simply as “The Female” and played with icy precision by Scarlett Johansson. Assisted by a silent, protective handler on a motorcycle, she dons the physical form of a voluptuous woman, buys high-street makeup and clothing, and drives a white cargo van through the rainy streets of Glasgow and the surrounding Scottish highways.
Her objective is purely predatory: she seeks out single, isolated men under the guise of flirtatious directions or late-night companionship. She lures her targets back to a dilapidated house. Inside, the interior dissolves into a dimensionless, pitch-black void. As she seductively undresses and walks backward, the entranced men follow her—only to slowly sink beneath the surface of a mirrored, tar-like black oil. Beneath this liquid floor, the men are preserved in suspended animation, their internal biological essence eventually harvested, leaving behind empty sloughs of skin.
The Turning Point
The alien’s detached efficiency begins to fracture during two critical encounters:
- The Beach: At a wind-swept coastline, she witnesses a tragic drowning where a husband and wife perish trying to save their dog. She watches the trauma with clinical indifference, ignoring the cries of their abandoned toddler on the shore and even striking a well-meaning bystander unconscious to harvest him. This scene establishes her total lack of human empathy.
- The Encounter with the Disfigured Man: Her trajectory fundamentally shifts when she picks up a gentle young man with severe facial tumors (played by non-professional actor Adam Pearson). Expecting to trap another victim of lust, she is instead met with extreme vulnerability and quiet dignity. When he touches her face, a spark of recognition occurs. For the first time, she views her body not as a weaponized lure, but as a site of sensory experience and subjectivity. She grants him mercy and lets him go.
The Downward Spiral into Humanity
Following this act of mercy, the alien deserts her mission, fleeing into the misty Scottish Highlands. She attempts to integrate into human life—tasting cake, watching television, and attempting sexual intimacy with a kind local man who takes her in.
However, her synthetic human shell cannot truly adapt; she cannot swallow human food, and physical intimacy induces a panic attack when she realizes the limitations of her anatomy. Ultimately, fleeing into the deep forest, she falls victim to the very real dangers of the world she sought to understand. Assailed by a predatory logger, her human disguise is torn away, revealing the slick, featureless black entity underneath. Terrified by what he has uncovered, the logger sets her ablaze, leaving her to turn to ash against the falling winter snow.
Core Themes and Philosophical Inquiries
Under the Skin functions as a multi-layered allegory, allowing for vastly different critical interpretations depending on the lens applied.
1. The Construction and Vulnerability of Gender
One of the film’s most potent themes is the exploration of female identity and sexual politics. In the first half of the film, Glazer constructs a stark reversal of contemporary rape culture. The Female utilizes the societal expectations of male lust to turn men into prey; she is a sex object engineered to punish male desire.
However, as she begins to develop an internal identity and seeks autonomy, she steps directly into the vulnerability experienced by human women. The moment she moves away from her predatory framework, she is exposed to systemic male violence. Her tragic end highlights how the very body she wore as a tool of power ultimately subjects her to the horrors of misogyny.
2. Empathy as the Human Benchmark
Philosophically, the film asks: What does it mean to be human? Initially, the alien is a machine-like drone. Her awakening is not triggered by human strength or beauty, but by human weakness and suffering.
Her interaction with Adam Pearson’s character serves as the film’s moral axis. By recognizing his vulnerability, she recognizes her own potential for subjectivity. The film posits that empathy is not an inherent trait of biology, but a conscious awakening—a choice to share in the fragility of flesh. Tragically, this newfound capacity for empathy is exactly what strips away her defenses, making her fragile enough to be destroyed.
3. Cosmic Isolation and The Human Landscape
Glazer heavily contrasts the geometric, sterile artificiality of the alien spaces (the blinding white room of the opening, the infinite black void of the trap) with the textured, chaotic reality of Earth. Glasgow is presented in all its wet, grey, crowded anonymity. The film highlights the loneliness inherent in modern civilization—every man she targets is chosen specifically because he will not be missed.
Production and Cinematography: The Aesthetics of Realism
The haunting, unique atmosphere of Under the Skin relies heavily on its revolutionary production methods and sensory design.
Hidden Cameras and Non-Actors
To capture an authentic, unvarnished portrait of humanity, Glazer and cinematographer Daniel Landin outfitted the interior of the cargo van with eight hidden cameras. Scarlett Johansson drove the van through real Scottish streets, interacting with actual pedestrians.
Many of the men she converses with were not actors and had no idea they were being filmed until after the encounter took place. This blurring of reality and fiction infuses the film with a docu-drama realism (cinéma vérité) that grounds the surreal sci-fi horror. Johansson’s global stardom contrasts sharply with the unsuspecting, working-class locals, mirroring the character’s profound cosmic displacement.
The Sonic Landscape
The film’s unsettling atmosphere is bound tightly to Mica Levi’s critically acclaimed score. Moving away from traditional orchestral or sci-fi electronic tropes, Levi utilized microtonal strings, distorted percussion, and clashing acoustic textures. The music mimics the alien’s psychological state—beginning as a mechanical, rhythmic, predatory drone (the “hunting” theme) and gradually dissolving into weeping, disorganized, and deeply melancholic string arrangements as the protagonist experiences existential panic and emotional awakening.
Legacy and Conclusion
Upon its release, Under the Skin divided mainstream audiences but was instantly hailed by critics as a masterpiece of modern cinema. It has frequently been compared to the works of Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey), Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth), and David Lynch due to its refusal to offer easy answers and its reliance on pure visual storytelling.
Ultimately, Under the Skin is a profoundly moving masterpiece about the terror and beauty of existence. By showing us our world through the eyes of a creature that belongs nowhere within it, Jonathan Glazer holds up a dark, uncompromising mirror to what lies just beneath the surface of our own humanity.
If you’d like a quick visual overview of the movie’s central narrative themes and visual philosophy, this “Under The Skin” explained in 3 minutes video breaks down how the film uses its unique alien perspective to explore the human experience.
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