Every now and then a trailer comes along and offers a glimpse of a movie you had no idea you wanted to see, if only because you wouldn't have thought it could exist in a million years. Case in point: the trailer for this Australian thriller In Her Skin. Until now, I had no idea that there was any hope of getting a Lifetime movie starring Guy Pearce and Sam Neill. But here we are!
Just like Lifetime movies, this one is based on a true story - in this case about a beautiful 15 year-old girl who gets kidnapped and murdered by a jealous, disturbed and less-beautiful 15-year-old girl. The beginning of the trailer shows a few shallow glimpses of style and convoluted symbolism with a prolonged shot of the pretty one dancing around in a bright blue cape. By the end, we're looking at the disturbed girl's notebooks, which have phrases like "I hate myself" scrawled all over them in terrible handwriting. If not for the pedigree involved here, I would totally mistake this trailer for a movie-of-the week and not a supposedly-prestigious foreign film that IFC picked up for release.
But let's talk about the pedigree! Guy Pearce and Sam Neill! Those guys are great! I honestly consider watching movies with even one of those actors regardless of how terrible it looks. Put them in a movie together as two dads trying to pick up the pieces of their daughters' involvement in a murder and I'm totally in.
I suppose there's a chance that the trailer is misleading and this movie is actually poignant somehow. If so, bonus! But even if the trailer is dead on, recent experience has taught that we can learn a lot even from Lifetime movies. Surely, the wisdom will only deepen with guys like Pearce and Neill front and center.
Verdict: Sold.