Filmed in Luxembourg and directed by Christian Neuman, Skin Walker is a dark tale of guilt, psychology and the twisted side of memory and personality.
Neuman’s film is shot with deliberately off-putting angles and close up frames and edited to keep the viewer off-guard. It is an unsettling experience but a powerful study of a woman at breaking point.
Skin Walker is produced by CALACH FILMS (LU) and CAVIAR (BE), while Tarantula Distribution is taking care of the release in Luxembourg.
UK-born actor Amber Anderson takes on the film’s leading role of Regine, a young woman who, it seems, struggles with inner demons. Without giving too much away, it soon becomes clear that those demons are bubbling just beneath the surface.
RTL Today spoke to Amber via telephone earlier this year and we got to discussing Somerset Cider, the importance of support structures for actors and her experience of filming in the Grand Duchy.
The early parts of our conversation are soundtracked by Amber’s multi-tasking as she does the very normal task of unloading her dishwasher at the same time as taking our call. This first interaction was a lovely little character-setting element of getting to know who Amber is.
There’s a great deal of mystique surrounding actors and their elevated celebrity and it is refreshing to have connected on a baser level. Anderson has starred in films with James Franco (Your Highness - albeit in a very early role), Bill Nighy, Rupert Graves & Anna Taylor-Joy (all in the acclaimed Emma).
She rubbed shoulders with GoT’s Nathalie Dormer on 2018 flick In Darkness, and she has screen time with Richard Ayoade, Tilda Swinton and Charlie Heaton (you know, from Stranger Things) in upcoming feature, The Souvenir: pt. II.
Anderson is also fan of Black Mirror - unsurprisingly, perhaps, since she appeared in the show’s second series episode The Waldo Moment.
You could be forgiven, though, for not being able to put the face to the name at this stage. As Anderson is quick to point out, she is still learning as an actor and as a person. Her starring role in Skin Walker could change all that, however.
Her character, the troubled Regine, appears in nearly every scene of this pitch-black horror noir. It’s a far cry from being a cast member on the serialization of Strike: The Cuckoo’s Calling, an adaptation of a J.K. Rowling novel.
“I really loved Luxembourg,” Anderson says of her time filming here. “We filmed in both Luxembourg and Belgium and must have been in Luxembourg for the first...six weeks. I had some time to explore and I enjoyed the city and a few of the sites, like the old barracks (Casemates) and the quaint little cafes, it was lovely. The countryside was beautiful and the mish-mash of culture was really interesting too.”
Anderson was born in Shepton Mallet, a stone’s throw (if you’ve a strong arm) from the more renowned Glastonbury. Moving to Scotland when she was six, Amber is always keen to stay close to the countryside and is a self-professed ‘country-bumpkin': “The older I get, the more I want to settle in the countryside again to be honest.”
It’s an interesting viewpoint from someone who is not yet thirty but it becomes apparent throughout the interview that these experiences feed into Anderson’s characters just as the characters feed into her experience.
“I feel different when I have a sense of space and am surrounded by nature,” Anderson continues while discussing her love for the outdoors. “London is obviously great for work and I have lived here for over ten years, so yeah, it feels like home but, yes, there is definitely an underlying feeling of anxiety that comes from living in a big city. It can be overwhelming.”
Having to go from one environment to another and having to inhabit changing headspaces, must of course, be part of the day job in acting terms.
“Well yes and no. I’ve had a fairly unusual and varied upbringing in terms of location, schooling and even in my family, where two social classes came together, so I feel comfortable around people wherever I go, really. I don’t think to be a good actor you have to have had personal experience of a certain thing or situation to be able to ‘understand’ it, if that makes sense. If you are doing your job right, as an actor, you should be able to empathize and interact with anyone.”
“In terms of the film Skin Walker, the context is about a girl who has gone to the city to build a life for herself, that’s for her and is not connected to her childhood or her family, but ultimately she gets drawn back to where she is from and I am able to identify with that. I moved to London aged 17 and had to build everything from scratch. That experience did help me identify with Regine very, very quickly.”
The relocation of Regine is one aspect that may have been easy for Amber to address, but there are many layers to the character that must have proven complex and even frightening to explore. Regine’s journey is not without struggle, pain and horror.
"[laughs] Yeah, but that’s what I mean, you don’t HAVE to have had personal experience to identify with everything, right? I’m not schizophrenic and I’m not in pockets of psychosis or acting out in an emotionally violent way, but I do think that humans have the capacity to go almost anywhere, if they are pushed in the right way.”
“There is an element of Regine in almost everyone. As an actor that is actually quite fun to play, you get to go to emotional extremes that you would normally reach in your day-to-day life.”
It must be pointed out that some of the scenes in Skin Walker are intense and make for uncomfortable viewing. Did this take some kind of toll on Anderson’s well-being?
“It is really important that actors are given support to properly process what they have gone through. Yes, it is a created scene but it is a very real emotional response in a setting that is not imagined, your mind and body go through a lot.”
“I needed a strong set up around me for when we dealt with those scenes, it was important for the me to have the support, so I could properly decompress from the heightened stresses on days of shooting where it was physically and emotionally tough.”
“It also depends on how sensitive you are. I am very sensitive and am likely to be impacted by....stuff. Other actors are more easily able to take off the ‘jacket’, if you like, when they get home.”
“The shooting schedule on Skin Walker was pretty relentless, for me, as Regine was near enough required on set everyday, for almost 12 weeks. It did help getting into the role, but I did need a holiday afterwards, that’s for sure.”
In one sequence in particular, Regine has a breakdown/epiphany, flying into a rage and throwing furniture around. On a set with David Fincher, a man notorious for his multiple takes, that could have been exhausting, but for Amber, under Neuman’s direction it was actually fun.
“We went a little bit rogue on that scene. We went a bit Dogme-style, and we just rolled. They let me do what I wanted and followed me. I kind of knew where I could go and what I could do in terms of safety, but other than that I was free. It was great, as we needed to see, subjectively, Regine’s handle on ‘reality’ and see things from her point of view. We only did it three or four times and the piece in the film is one long take.”
For the record, Amber’s rate of chair throws per minute is probably seven or eight. “It was interesting in that scene, none of the extras knew what was happening, they were looking at this sweet little girl in a chapel, suddenly flipping chairs...A lot of the reactions are very real and that helped me a lot.”
That contradiction, or preconception, is something Anderson has to deal with regularly: the relationship between appearance and actual. “It depends on from who. Yes, sometimes, I will get it from older men, who may consider me as innocent-looking until I then open my mouth [laughs]. I went blonde for a role a few years ago and everyone was telling me that I would be treated very differently and actually they didn’t. I was almost disappointed that they hadn’t treated me any differently. I didn’t have more fun as a blonde at all and for this film I got to go jet black.”
Anderson was drawn to the project by the idea of playing a lead role that was very much the central focus of the script and was a “little extreme and new.” She wanted to be challenged: “I’d never done horror before. It was really about creating something different to anything I had ever done. The way that it was written had a kind of beauty to it and the locations were interesting. I always respond well to elements that are slightly different.”
There are many twists involved in Skin Walker’s 87-minute running time and these are key to the viewer’s investment in the film. For Anderson, the twists were revealed early on but shaped the way Regine’s layers could be teased out in ways that viewers may not be aware on first viewing.
Anderson is concerned that I may have guessed the ending early on, but we can safely say that there is subtle misdirection and the odd red herring along the way. The palpable sense of unease throughout also helps to draw the viewer away from what may have been obvious from the outset. In an era when film connoisseurs are always on the look-out for a twist (thanks in part Sixth Sense) and with the internet drowning in spoilers, it’s a difficult task.
“There’s a very interesting aspect in the fact that Regine is suffering from acute disassociation and what is a massive memory lapse caused by trauma. That kind of realization and the moments toward the end were really important for me to actually chose and play a ‘condition’. Hers is never specified either in the filming or in the script and it was important for me to try and zoom in on one, rather than simply play someone who is ‘mentally ill’, which could be really reductive and minimizing for those that are suffering and working through things.”
Anderson is in fact an advocate for Mental Health awareness (Saturday 10 October is International Mental Health Day) and has been fairly vocal about her own struggles: “It’s a really important time at the moment, people are speaking up a lot more right now, that’s creating a much more welcoming environment for opening up. With Regine it was vital that we treated her experience with respect and honesty. Chris (Neuman) and I hit on schizophrenia, as that seemed to be closer to what she was (Regine) experiencing, coupled with dissociative amnesia.”
Amber is quick to dismiss the idea that this required a juggling of sub-characters that formed her main character; “It was my job to portray what Regine felt and experienced as she would have felt and experienced things in her reality. My job was to a play a girl, who in her mind, was going home to reconnect with her family and make peace with her past.”
The second part of our interview will be published next week and Isabella Eastwood has an interview with the film’s director Christian Neuman on the way too.
Skin Walker is released in Luxembourg on Wednesday 14 October. RTL Today has a competition for winners to view the film at a choice of Kinepolis Kirchberg or Belval, check our FB page for more details.
