55068: Skincare

Film Noir is largely a byproduct of fear and paranoia. It was a way for art to express society's concerns about the modern, post-war world and all the changes that came with it. Commies were everywhere, and so were people informing on them. Bombs were bigger and scarier than ever before, and women were getting all sorts of opinions about things. It was a frightening time, and it felt for many people like the bottom had fallen out of the world. And so, an entire genre of film came around to give voice to our inchoate fears about the new normal. It's been decades since the Noir's popularity peaked, but you can still see strains of its style and feeling running through thrillers today, like Skincare.

Loosely based on real events, Skincare tells the tale of Hope Goldman (subtle), an aesthetician-to-the-stars who is about to launch her own line of skincare products, but is derailed by an unknown enemy who is, for lack of a better word, fucking with her life. Hope descends into paranoia as the fuckery continues to escalate around her, eventually leading to a very messy denouement.

Hope, played with scenery-devouring confidence by Elizabeth Banks, takes on both the role of damsel in distress and femme fatale. She is melodrama made flesh, and is exactly what Skincare needs in order to keep from taking itself too seriously. Hope is driven by her need to succeed, having invested all of her resources into launching her namesake product line. She's already on edge when we meet her, dodging her landlord and hustling to keep up a veneer of success for her wealthy clientele. She is a house of cards, and she is about to be blown over by a competing aesthetician, Angel, played with nefarious ambiguity by Luis Gerardo Méndez. When Angel opens his own spa across the street from hers, Hope's journey to madness truly begins.

Shortly after his arrival, Hope endures a campaign of terror. Someone hacks into her email and sends an insane message to all her contacts. She receives an SMS with a video of her at home. Someone slashes her tires. There are more things that happen, but I'd rather not spoil them, except to say that they are all terrifyingly plausible and possible. It doesn't take a criminal mastermind to menace Hope like this. It just takes someone with a couple hundred bucks and a few hours to spend. Marinating in that realization could have made Skincare a real downer.

Fortunately, Banks delivers the heightened, crazed performance the film needs to move from scary toward camp. Hope's various attempts to her thwart her harasser start from a place of grounding, and quickly spin off into insane scenarios. At heart, Film Noir was a genre based on melodrama, and heightening everything. In that way, Skincare delightfully follows in Noir's footsteps.

Skincare is not a great movie, by any stretch of the imagination. But it is a very good movie, and worth a watch. Lewis Pullman is an unhinged treat as Jordan, the martial artist life coach. Nathan Fillion oozes as a smarmy, womanizing TV host, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez manages to still have some fun as Marine, Hope's assistant and the film's de facto voice of reason. Director Austin Peters finds moments of humor amongst the drama, and Laura Zempel's editing keeps a brisk pace while ratcheting up the terror for Hope. If you can, see it in the theater, of give it a shot when it starts streaming. And maybe turn on two-factor authentication for your email account.