A new, ultra low budget horror movie has been causing a stir online…and it isn’t even out yet. Skinamarink was made with the micro-budget of $15,000 “I joke with people that, ‘We made it for the price of a premium pre-owned vehicle,'” director Kyle Edward Ball told Variety. But it’s received major buzz from the festival circuit, as well as unfortunately, a pirate copy that has been circulated.
2022 has been an extremely strong year for horror, and low budget movies such as Barbarian, Mad God, and Terrifier 2 have given the big boys a run for their money. Skinamarink will be getting a theatrical release in January via IFC Midnight, and it will find a home on horror streaming service Shudder later in 2023. This will hopefully kickstart another doozy of a year for horror movies.
Kyle Edward Ball has faced many challenges with the creepily atmospheric film, firstly there was scraping together the budget, then his assistant director Joshua Boookhalter passed away during post-production. And then a technical snafu during one of the at-home screenings made the film available to be pirated, despite assurances from the platform it would be safe.
“I think people were under the impression we didn’t have distribution and they were doing us a favor by pirating, but we did have a plan,” Ball says. “Before it was pirated, on Twitter when anyone talked about my movie I would ‘like’ it. If they did fan art, I’d retweet it. It’s so cool that people are doing fan art!”
“Since it’s been pirated, it’s been difficult, because no filmmaker wants to tsk tsk someone who’s saying, ‘Oh my God, I love your movie,’ right? At the end of the day, I am happy that someone saw my film and it touched them. Obviously, I would have preferred they see it through a more legitimate means, because that does affect me and that does affect the other people who have helped with the film.”
Hopefully the strong word-of-mouth that has been generated will lead people to seek it out in January, and if people have watched it and loved it at home in its pirated version – they should want to see it in a cinema with a crowd.
In the meantime, check out our guide to the best Christmas horror movies.