Under the Skin extended thoughts

Here I talk in more detail about Under the Skin. Spoilers follow.

Each of the walkers the alien picks up has a place to be, and yet none of them put up a strong resistance to her awkward attempts to put them in the car. Even her third victim, a deformed young adult, doesn’t hesitate to follow the alien back to her “house”. The film’s reliance on visual storytelling leaves the implications vague, but they’re there for more perceptive viewers to pick up on. These men are clearly excited about the prospect of sex with a random woman, possibly thinking more about the potential sex than the actual destination-which is why they enter her vehicle for the shortest of trips. Maybe this says something about objectification-many say it does, and the pieces are definitely there.

A more telling part would be near the end, when a man in the woods attempts to rape the alien, and instead tears off part of her skin. Seeing the alien’s true form, he’s no longer attracted and instead horrified. The alien at this point seems scared and confused-perhaps about the implications of her humanity, as some have said, though this is one of many obtuse things in the film. Unfortunately, now that she’s no longer sex object Scarlett Johansson, and instead something overworldly, he’s immediately afraid. He fears the other, and thus pours gas on her and immolates her. In one of the final scenes of the film, we see the alien dying just for existing.

At this point, she has ceased preying on random men. Instead, it’s come to a point where men are preying on her, as she has sex with a random man she meets on the train, and as said suffers an attempted rape. What might have driven this change of heart was a scene previous, where she meets the aforementioned disfigured man and chooses to take pity and allow him to run back to town. This sort of connection to the world she’s preying on may have caused her crisis of faith.

I’m not entirely sure what this says, but there’s definitely something to be read from this. Others have done much more digging than I have, and all I can say is that I’m glad I saw the film.