--- title: "Under the Skin" year: 2014 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/under-the-skin" fi1m_score: 81 critics_score: 72 critics_reviews: 20 published: "2026-09-21T03:25:24.405247+00:00" updated: "2026-09-21T03:25:24.854383+00:00" region: "CO" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Under the Skin (2014) Directed by Jonathan Glazer · 1h 48m · Thriller, Science Fiction, Drama **Fi1m score: 81** · Critics 72 from 20 reviews *In a sentence:* Scarlett Johansson cruises Glasgow in a white van asking men the way, and the men are the ones who should worry > Jonathan Glazer strips Michel Faber’s novel to a woman, a van and the men of Glasgow, and for eighty minutes it is cold, exact and frightening. It loosens once she stops hunting, but Mica Levi’s score and Scarlett Johansson’s face carry it home. ## Synopsis Glasgow. A man on a motorbike (Jeremy McWilliams) carries a motionless young woman (Lynsey Taylor Mackay) from a roadside, and in a white room a second woman (Scarlett Johansson) puts on her clothes. She drives a white van into the city, pulls up beside men walking alone, asks them the way and offers a lift to the ones with no family waiting at home. She takes them to a house where the rooms are black and the floor gives way under them. The motorcyclist follows at a distance and tidies up behind her. Between pickups she tries on lipstick in a shopping centre and watches the crowds. On a windy beach she meets a swimmer (Kryštof Hádek) and a family, and stays to watch. ## Review Jonathan Glazer has made three films in fourteen years, and this is the strangest. He and Walter Campbell take Michel Faber’s novel and keep almost nothing of it except the idea: a woman who is not a woman drives a white van around Glasgow, asks men the way, and takes home the ones nobody will miss. Glazer never tells us where she is from or what she is for. What he has made is cold, exact and frightening for about eighty minutes, and slower and less certain for the last thirty. We would still send you to it. How it was shot matters. Dan Landin fitted the van with small hidden cameras, and many of the men Scarlett Johansson talks to on the street were not actors and did not know they were in a film until afterwards. You can tell. They lean into the window, they laugh a beat late, they give directions with great care. Against this Chris Oddy builds the place she takes them: a black room with no visible walls and a floor that behaves like a shallow pool of oil. The men undress and walk towards her and go down into it without a splash. The cut from a Glasgow pavement to that room is the whole film in one edit, and Paul Watts makes it again and again without the shock wearing off. Mica Levi’s score does a great deal of the work and does it with very little. A viola slides up and holds, a drum keeps something like a heartbeat under it, and three falling notes come in whenever she has found a man worth stopping for. It is music that sounds slightly broken. When the film goes quiet, which it does for long stretches, the traffic and the rain and the club noise do the job instead. Johansson is remarkable in a part with perhaps two pages of lines. Stephen Noble puts her in a fake fur, tight jeans and a black bob, the outfit of someone who has studied what women wear rather than worn it, and she plays the face to match: a smile that arrives on cue and goes the moment the man looks away. Watch her in the shopping centre trying on lipstick. She is learning how the thing works. Later, when the learning starts to cost her, she barely changes her expression, and that is where the performance is. We were horrified by one sequence and have not shaken it. On a beach in the wind, a family goes into the sea, a swimmer (Kryštof Hádek) goes in after them, and she watches from the shingle, and what she does when it is over is done without haste or interest. Glazer shoots it from far off, in long takes, with no music, and the surf carries on as if nothing had happened. We have seen more violent scenes in British films; we have not seen a colder one. The trouble comes when she stops hunting. The film heads north, into forest and mist, and it slows to match her. Glazer will not tell us what is going on inside her, and for most of the film that works: we read her the way the men do, from outside. In the last stretch, though, the film needs us to believe she has changed, and it has put away every tool it could have used to show it. A few scenes in a house and on a hillside could belong to a gentler picture. The ending itself is hard and right, and we will not describe it. Glazer’s [*Sexy Beast*](https://film.one/film/sexy-beast) (2000) was a gangster comedy full of dialogue. *Birth* (2004) had less of it. This has almost none, and it is the most complete thing he has made. The nearest film to it is Nicolas Roeg’s [*The Man Who Fell to Earth*](https://film.one/film/the-man-who-fell-to-earth) (1976), another alien in Britain who learns how people work by copying them, and Glazer’s is the stricter of the two. See it in a cinema if you can, in the dark, with the sound up, because Levi’s score was built for a room and the black pool needs a big screen to look like nothing at all. At home it becomes an odd, quiet film about a woman in a van, which it also is. It runs 108 minutes and carries a 15. *Fi1m score 81, published 21 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics admire it, and the praise gathers in the same places. Scarlett Johansson’s near-silent performance as the alien is singled out again and again, as is Mica Levi’s score, which several reviews credit with much of the film’s unease. Glazer’s decision to strip away the novel’s backstory and shoot on the streets of Glasgow is widely taken as the film’s strength: an alien’s-eye view of ordinary humanity, cold at first, then something closer to pity. The reservations cluster around the absence of plot and the slow, elliptical pacing. The spread is wide: three of twenty reviews are outright negative. The Hollywood Reporter, writing from a festival screening, finds it loses coherence and offers too little substance beneath the images. The New Yorker argues the alien’s inner life is never developed and the music is left to do the work. The Times goes furthest, calling it pretentious and a reductive parable of womanhood. ## Straight answers **Is Under the Skin worth watching?** *Under the Skin* is worth watching for its frightening, spare science fiction, Scarlett Johansson’s performance and Mica Levi’s unsettling score; we give it 81 out of 100. We recommend it to viewers comfortable with long silences and unanswered questions, though the final stretch slows and makes its central character’s changes harder to believe. **How long is Under the Skin, and what is it rated?** *Under the Skin* runs 1h 48m. It is a thriller and science fiction film. **Where can I watch Under the Skin in Colombia?** *Under the Skin* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in Colombia. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How violent or frightening is Under the Skin, and is it suitable for children?** *Under the Skin* carries a UK 15 certificate and is not suitable for children: men undress during predatory encounters, and its cold treatment of people in danger is deeply frightening. We find the beach sequence particularly horrifying because of the central character’s indifference; viewers sensitive to sustained dread have good reason to be cautious. **How does Under the Skin compare to The Man Who Fell to Earth?** *Under the Skin* is the more controlled film beside *The Man Who Fell to Earth*, though both follow an alien learning human behaviour by imitation. We favour Glazer’s precision for sustained unease; Roeg’s film offers a gentler, more moving central performance from David Bowie, but its wandering second half asks for more patience than it always earns. **Is Under the Skin based on a true story or a book?** *Under the Skin* is adapted from Michel Faber’s novel, not based on a true story, and keeps little beyond the central premise of an alien woman picking up men in a van. We would approach it as a separate work rather than a faithful adaptation: familiarity with the book is not needed, and the film deliberately leaves much unexplained. ### Reviews we read (20) - **Little White Lies**, Violet Lucca (5/5/5): The review celebrates the film's hypnotic visuals, Mica Levi score and philosophical depth as a feminist sci-fi fable that lingers powerfully. It singles out a harrowing beach sequence for its icy matter-of-fact depiction of human vulnerability and opportunism. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/under-the-skin) - **The Telegraph**, Robbie Collin (95/100, inferred): Collin calls the film a masterpiece, praising its astonishing, abstract approach that strips the story to its essentials and renders Johansson iconic as the nameless alien femme fatale. He highlights the extraordinary score and the film's hypnotic blend of realism and surrealism. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/10694337/Under-the-Skin-review.html) - **Film Comment**, Jonathan Romney (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Glazer's audacious, experimental approach to the alien narrative and its defamiliarizing effect on human experience. Johansson delivers a singular, alert performance amid vérité footage and striking, otherworldly imagery. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/under-the-skin-jonathan-glazer-review/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Betsy Sharkey (90/100, inferred): Sharkey describes the film as a genesis moment of sci-fi fable and performance, urging viewers to surrender to its primal, sensory experience and abstraction. She singles out Scarlett Johansson’s fearless, emotionally baring work as the alien protagonist becomes more human, along with the authentic street scenes and Mica Levi’s unsettling score. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-under-the-skin-20140404-story.html) - **Sight and Sound**, Sam Wigley (90/100, inferred): The critic highlights Glazer's austere, estranging approach that turns Scotland into an alien landscape and uses the alien protagonist's gradual awakening to explore what it means to be human. He praises the film's clinical detachment and rigorous ending that avoids sentimentality. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-under-skin) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (85/100, inferred): Bradshaw finds the film visually stunning and deeply disturbing, a pure injection of mood that blends futuristic body horror with social-realist grit in Glasgow streets. He singles out the casting of Scarlett Johansson as the ultimate alien predator and the film's eerie, erotic power. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/13/under-the-skin-scarlett-johansson-peter-bradshaw) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (80/100, inferred): Glazer transforms the source material into an abstract, sensory-driven exploration of the death drive and estrangement, using striking visuals, sound, and Johansson's performance to evoke alienation and subtextual unease. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/under-the-skin/) - **Evening Standard**, David Sexton (70/100, inferred): The film is a visually and sonically striking experience best approached without expectations of conventional narrative or sci-fi thrills, rewarding viewers who surrender to its dreamy, alien perspective on humanity. Johansson is disturbingly effective as the detached, repellent-yet-compelling alien figure in real-world situations. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/under-the-skin-film-review-scarlett-johansson-is-disturbingly-good-9191886.html) - **IndieWire**, Chris Willman (70/100, inferred): Glazer's film is a seductive, atmospheric sci-fi tale centered on Johansson's alien figure navigating human (and inhuman) encounters in Scotland. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/culture/review-jonathan-glazers-seductive-girl-who-fell-to-earth-pic-under-the-skin-starring-scarlett-johansson-87547/) - **The New York Times**, Stephen Holden (70/100, inferred): Holden calls the film a cerebral sci-fi horror fantasy and praises Scarlett Johansson’s indelible performance as an extraterrestrial femme fatale whose predatory allure evokes classic Hollywood icons. He highlights how the movie dispenses with the novel’s backstory to create a mood of nightmarish alienation and ends with an image that challenges notions of human identity. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/movies/scarlett-johansson-as-a-deadly-alien-in-under-the-skin.html) - **Empire**, William Thomas (50/100, inferred): Glazer's adaptation is frustrating and bewildering rather than the sexy thriller suggested by the source novel, yet it contains moments of beauty and horror that provoke thought and debate. Johansson delivers a quietly brilliant, brave performance as the awakening alien figure. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/skin-2-review/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Todd McCarthy (40/100, inferred): The film is a visually and aurally striking conundrum that loses momentum and coherence, delivering too little dramatic or intellectual substance for most viewers despite strong images and score. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/under-skin-film-review-627838/) - **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (30/100, inferred): Brody finds the premise promising but criticizes the film for leaving the alien’s perspective and inner life completely undeveloped, relying instead on insistent music for eeriness. He notes one strong shot of Johansson on a Glasgow street but concludes that the movie flattens images and thoughts in advance, remaining orthodox realism despite its sci-fi basis. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/alien-scarlett-johansson) - **The Times**, Camilla Long (10/100, inferred): Long delivers a scathing verdict, hating the film's pretentious lack of dialogue or plot and its reductionist, misogynistic parable of womanhood. She singles out the empty, mind-numbingly absurd execution as a clumpy disappointment. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/the-zero-theorem-and-under-the-skin-cts7kdpqpb0) - **Paste**, Scott Wold (8.9): The critic praises the film's success in conveying an otherworldly perspective through visual and auditory means, noting its meditation on humanity and strong performances. They single out the stunning cinematography and Mica Levi's score for particular praise. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/under-the-skin) - **Consequence** (85/100, inferred): The review describes the film as one of the scariest of 2014, highlighting its immersive nightmare quality and exploration of what it means to be human. It singles out Scarlett Johansson's career-best performance and the tragic awakening of empathy within the character for praise. [Read](https://consequence.net/2014/04/film-review-under-the-skin/) - **Den of Geek**, Ryan Lambie (85/100, inferred): The film is an intimate, disturbing and powerful sci-fi art piece that offers an alien's-eye view of humanity. It is difficult and unsettling from start to finish, but ultimately brilliant for its fresh perspective. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/under-the-skin-review-2/) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (B+): The critic finds the film an elliptical, Roeg-like sci-fi tale of an alien seductress whose growing empathy creates tension with her mission. Johansson is perfectly cast in the lead and the imagery is striking, though the somber pacing and themes may limit mainstream appeal. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/review-jonathan-glazers-seductive-girl-who-fell-to-earth-pic-under-the-skin-starring-scarlett-johansson-20140401/) - **Digital Spy**, Emma Dibdin (4/5): Glazer has created a captivating nightmare that is strange, ambiguous and haunting, with Johansson giving a mesmerizing, near-silent performance as the alien developing empathy. The disorienting power stems from both its otherworldliness and familiar horror in the climax. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a553467/under-the-skin-review-scarlett-johansson-haunts-in-mesmerising-sci-fi/) - **The Wrap** (75/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as enigmatic and hypnotic, praising its use of sound, music, and elliptical narrative to create a disorienting atmosphere. Scarlett Johansson's performance is singled out as providing an extraordinary window into an alien perspective. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/skin-review-alien-arthouse-oblique-scarlett-johansson-puzzler/) ## Details - **Director:** Jonathan Glazer - **Director:** Jonathan Glazer - **Screenplay:** Walter Campbell, Jonathan Glazer - **Writer:** Milo Addica - **Novel:** Michel Faber - **Cinematography:** Dan Landin - **Editor:** Paul Watts - **Music:** Mica Levi - **Production design:** Chris Oddy - **Costume design:** Stephen Noble - **Producer:** Nick Wechsler, James Wilson - **Cast:** Scarlett Johansson; Jeremy McWilliams; Lynsey Taylor Mackay; Dougie McConnell; Kevin McAlinden; D. Meade; Andrew Gorman; Joe Szula - **Runtime:** 1h 48m - **First release (the US):** 29 August 2013 - **Genres:** Thriller, Science Fiction, Drama - **Budget:** $13 million - **Box office:** $7 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7bAZCOk0Sc ## Where to watch in Colombia - Amazon Prime Video: add-on *Checked 2026-09-21.* Also available in: AT, AU, BR, CA, CL, CO, DE, FR, GB, IE, IL, IT, MX, NZ, UA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - European Film Award for Best Composer 2014: European Film Award for Best Composer (won) ## If you liked this - *The Man Who Fell to Earth* (1976), Fi1m 82: Roeg’s alien in Britain, David Bowie learning people the way she does, with television instead of a van — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-man-who-fell-to-earth.md) - *Ratcatcher* (1999), Fi1m 88: Lynne Ramsay’s Glasgow, shot close and quiet, with the same eye for what the city looks like from outside — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ratcatcher.md) - *Let the Right One In* (2008), Fi1m 88: A Swedish predator in a housing estate, and the same patience about who is being hunted — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/let-the-right-one-in.md) - *Birth* (2004): Glazer’s earlier film, one face watched for two hours while nobody explains anything - *Wings of Desire* (1987), Fi1m 88: Wenders’ angels over Berlin, listening in on humans and wanting what they cannot have — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/wings-of-desire.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/under-the-skin