Legos have never been as ominous as they are in , the surrealist Mexican classic The Exterminating Angel, the original Black Christmas, the fuzzy sound design of David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and the work of cult master Roger Corman among his antecedents.
The question now that he has found such improbable success is whether he can effectively scale up the way recent horror disciples like Jordan Peele (Get Out), Ari Aster (Hereditary), Rose Glass (Saint Maud), and the trio known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not) have done.
What, for the sake of argument, would Skinamarink look like with a $5 million budget from Blumhouse Productions or A24?
“You could probably make a good movie—you could probably make a great movie—but you couldn’t really make Skinimarink,” Ball said. “And I don’t know how creepy it would be. You could probably make something pretty scary, but I think the big thing with the lo-fi aesthetic is the feeling. It retains its creepiness. I think the bigger the budget, it’s harder to get that creepiness back. There’s exceptions, like The Shining, but that’s a hard thing to extract. My strength is atmosphere, and I need to rely on that.”
