Spoiler Alert – This article details nearly the entire plot of the film.

I’m six years late.  I don’t get out much, and I see movies in the theater even less.  So I admit I’m very late in writing about this movie. I wouldn’t have even considered writing this, though, if my interpretation of the film was easily found elsewhere.  The truth is, after watching a film that makes me think, I like to look up reviews to see if others notice the same things I do. Sometimes I don’t feel qualified on my own to decide whether the use of a certain color holds deep meaning or a red curtain is just a red curtain.

The common thread I found in every take on Under the Skin was that we all understood how a predator relating to prey was the crux of the plot.  We got that aliens were creepy, and this type of invasion was particularly unnerving. And that’s where all consensus gives way to confusion or boredom.  It’s easy to feel this movie is a lot of stylish nothing if the extent of meaning is limited to the obvious. Certain actions we witness only serve to befuddle.  I’m not saying my take is more correct than any other, but it became really obvious to me that all the reviews and discussions I was reading were by men, and they were all avoiding what I felt the film was truly about- how patriarchy alienates women.

When our alien is created, she is made in the image of what men find appealing.  We accept this as a hunting tactic, which becomes very obvious later on when one of her victims remarks how attractive her lips, eyes, and black hair are.  It’s all very femme fatale and could easily stop providing meaning there, but it doesn’t. At her creation, we see the now discarded form of the previous hunter- another beautiful and deadly woman like herself.  But now this former huntress is discarded and crumpled on the ground. She has served her usefulness, and she is being picked over like a carcass. We don’t know exactly why she is no longer hunting, but we know she’s feeling something because of her tears.  Our alien protagonist does not register concern, she doesn’t feel any regard or pity for the woman who is at her feet. And she doesn’t see her future reflected there in the way we see this scene as foreshadowing. She’s distanced from the other hunter, despite sharing a similar existence.

How can a movie about a woman hunting men be about how men harm women?  Men portray women as having control because women hold desirability, and many times in cinema and other art forms, women are reduced to having sexuality as their only power, especially in regard to men.  The tricky thing about desirability as control is that the person who desires actually holds the reins. It’s a farce for men to say women hold the authority of attraction when men get to decide what is attractive.  Our hunter is shown to us in shades of black and red to remind us she is dangerous despite how pleasing she is to the men around her. We watch her hunt and trap men within a very disturbing black void.

The void itself is fascinating enough, and so many of our questions revolve around the purpose and ultimate destination of the captured men.  These men were all blatantly misogynistic and clearly felt they were in charge of the situation the whole time. The perfect prey had no ties to others and was isolated, much the same way modern toxic masculinity alienates men from the rest of the world.  These men felt entitled to a sexual experience in a way that never brokered the question of why a strange woman was suddenly coming on to them very strongly. It’s so much more than any mystical power or control she exerts. Much of their ability to be captured lies within how they viewed women and themselves.  Once we do learn what becomes of them, we see fully how toxic masculinity harms men as well. These men finally become husks- they have lost what makes them human. In becoming a food source for the male-dominated alien society, they fuel the system of patriarchy that thrives on their toxic beliefs.

Somehow through her continued proximity to these men, our alien becomes emotionally aware of the ways she is harming them.  She starts to care, and this is shown fully when she preys upon a disfigured man. He does not view her as if she is the prey like the others.  He is hesitant but ultimately overwhelmed by her allure. Before she leaves him in the trap, she encounters her own image, darkened and hidden from us within a dirty mirror.  She looks into her own eyes as her controllers did to verify she could still hunt. Is she connecting because she is seeing herself as a human? She sees a fly against a blue window, and it’s hard to say whether that fly is the man she just trapped or herself within the trap of serving as a huntress.  We see her regard an insect one other time, when she is standing over the previous hunter. She picks a small ant off of the former hunters’ body and regards it coolly.

This time, she goes back and lets her prey run free.  She tries to get away from her controllers. Until she is finally pursued, it is easy to forget that these female hunters are still serving a male form of their species.  She tries to eat some cake, but she immediately rejects it. This can be seen as her trying to pass as human or be human, but it’s also very telling that she goes after things that are meant to be pleasurable.  She is beginning to seek her own desires and not fulfilling those that the men in charge have set out for her. Looking back to the time she stalked a man at a party, she nearly left until a group of women welcomed her into the group.  Her amber vision phase in the city was filled with images of women, old and young, going about their day, captured in close up shots that humanize them. She was relating to other women just as much as she was pitying the prey she captured.

Now without her fur coat, she seems more vulnerable.  She is assisted by a kind man, and she seems to be on a path away from the destruction and abuse she formerly endured and created.  She seems free of the cycle, until she realizes that just like in the instance of the chocolate cake, she was not created for her own pleasure.  She was never designed to physically have sex with a human. In some ways, this echoes the slut-shaming efforts of toxic masculinity, feeling both entitled to use women sexually and also eager to condemn women for their own sexual desires.  This causes her to flee, perhaps because she was afraid he would reject her, or maybe because the weight of knowing she could never live completely as human was too much. As a survivor of intimate partner violence, this reminded me of the ensuing trauma in the sense that finding someone to accept you as you are after a huge betrayal is an isolating and terrifying experience.

The ending is probably my least favorite inclusion in the film, though I understand it serves a purpose.  She has run out of places to go and is stuck between two worlds, so realistically she doesn’t really stand a chance.  The aggression of the man who attempts to graphically rape (though thankfully not filmed in an oversexualized manner) and then kill our protagonist could easily just be shrugged off as chance, or the true form of men and masculinity.  Misogynists might say she had it coming, or that’s what happens when women aren’t protected by men. However, there’s a lot to be said about the juxtaposition between her leaving the comfort of a caring man and then encountering a predator.  It hearkens back to the insulting expressions of “not all men”, as if these terms do anything at all to eliminate the harm that a patriarchal system enacts. The existence of kind men is not enough to prevent gendered violence, and women should have the autonomy to be on their own without expecting harm or needing a man’s oversight.

The final man’s attempts at prying off her clothes were so violent, he begins to pull off her human skin, exposing her dark, featureless form.  He is further alienating her by confronting her with some of the worst trauma a person can endure. While he could have fled in terror and she would have let him, he came back specifically to destroy her.  This echoes how abusive men feel ownership over those they seek to enact control over. It could also represent the danger that trans women have endured at the hands of cis men who feel enraged at what they consider a deception, but what is clearly just toxic masculinity and transmisogyny.  It’s almost a little too “if I can’t have you, no one will”, but also with the same disgust and vehemence as an abuser who won’t allow their partner to leave. That’s not to say cis men are the only gender capable of abuse, but in the context of this movie, there is a very clear focus on the impact of cis men and the patriarchy.  This possessive and destructive nature of the patriarchy is echoed throughout the film, but it swells into a crescendo as we see it destroy the protagonist in flames at the end of the film.

The pan out from the black and red of the flames into the white expanse as it begins snowing makes me wonder at the color play throughout the film.  Black, red, blue, and white are seen in different environments with white remaining namely at the beginning and end of the film. Does this represent purity?  Nothingness? Does black mean seduction and red show destruction? Is blue sorrow and introspection? Is amber human warmth? I mean, that’s some of the guesses I could make, but I don’t know for sure.  I do know that it made for some amazing visual harmony, and in lists of sci-fi films that could be considered art, I’d include this one.

In sharing how I understood the film, I don’t really care to delve into whether this is feminist or not.  I don’t know if adherence to that term or our usual metrics in deciding this does every piece justice. A fixation on subverting gender roles as power grabs and implying there is only violence and submission feels limiting.  Maybe the message is that there are different types of power. Perhaps the huntress establishes with her internal conflict that the strength of the emotional, something often attributed to women and their designation as frail, could ultimately be more powerful than the physical.  Or maybe this is just the ramblings of someone who despises misogyny and watched a movie about a displaced alien.