10 Horror Movie Trailers Scarier Than The Actual Film

Kyle Edward Ball’s full-length directorial debut, 2022’s Skinamarink, remains immensely divisive, with about as many people saying it’s the scariest movie they’ve ever seen as saying it’s intolerably undercooked.

It tells the tale of child siblings who awaken to find that their father is missing; the doors and windows of their house are permanently shut; and various objects keep disappearing, reappearing, and changing positions. In the process, it taps into the requisite grainy footage, staticky audio, and abstract storytelling of analogue horror.

Ball developed the project after finding success with his 2020 short film, Heck. At just under two minutes long, Skinamarink’s trailer perfectly encapsulates why it would’ve worked better had he stuck to the same runtime limitation.

By portraying empty rooms, half-open doors, flickering lights, children’s feet, and other ordinarily innocuous things, it conveys the all-too-relatable childhood fears of abandonment, isolation, and unseen sinisterness. Naturally, the kids’ crying and unintelligible whispering – in conjunction with the distorted voice of a man periodically stating, “In this house” – heightens the horror.

The problem is that Ball employs these gimmicks across Skinamarink’s 110 minutes without doing anything extra to keep viewers engaged and afraid. Consequently, what’s unbearably nail-biting in small doses becomes unbearably dull at roughly fifty times the duration.

Frankly, you're more likely to yawn than scream by the end of it.