Though the true events on which the film is based took place nearly 15 years ago, our current cultural climate—where bigotry and hatred is emboldened by racist vitriol trickling down from the highest levels of government—undoubtedly colors Skin’s white-supremacist redemption story. Whereas Guy Nattiv’s Oscar-winning short film of the same name focused on an ironic revenge narrative, this feature film focuses on heavily-tattooed skinhead Bryon “Babs” Widner (Jamie Bell) breaking away from a violent neo-Nazi group in order to turn over a new leaf when he finds love.
Skin’s tension hinges on the manipulation and menace involved in the white-power Vinlanders clan, a “family” helmed by the domineering Fred “Hammer” Krager (Bill Camp) and his wife Shareen (a perfectly cast Vera Farmiga), the latter of whom the young men call “Ma” even as she kisses them on the lips. But despite captivating performances and visceral subject matter, Nattiv’s film too often sidesteps more profound examination of the culture of hate.
Bryon’s evolution from seething, punch-happy enforcer to quasi-sensitive family man comes about largely as a result of emotional maturation rather than any grand epiphany about the error of his ways. When he meets Julie (Danielle Macdonald), a single mother of three who grew up amid the white power movement but has already taken strides to pull away from it, Bryon quickly begins to realize that home is where we make it. The Vinlanders once offered the young Bryon, abused and neglected, the only stability he’d ever had. Now from the other side, he sees through the coercion and brainwashing when Fred and a few goons recruit a runaway teen (Russell Posner) who admits to Bryon he’d only joined the militant hate group because he was hungry and they offered him food.
Bryon begins pulling away from Fred and Ma’s bullshit, viewing them as the manipulative and controlling people they obviously are. He struggles to escape their grip as the group harasses and threatens his new family after he marries Julie. But he never fully grapples with the gravity of the hateful worldview he’s violently professed, seemingly just outgrowing it rather than truly seeking redemption. The film offers a look at someone simply trying to escape a sordid past, the consequences of which aren’t so easy to shake. There’s value in humanizing the misguided youth who get sucked in by hate-filled charlatans offering them a simulacrum of family. But Skin does so by pitting Bryon against a malignant worldview so blatantly wrong that it robs nuance and complexity from his inner struggle, while briefly depicting victims of the group’s hate crimes only in service to the moral growth of a once-violent white man.
Unfortunately, Skin relegates its most compelling character, African-American activist Daryle Jenkins (Mike Colter), to the sidelines. A man who’s made it his mission to publicly expose clandestine hate groups as well as to convert skinheads from their racist ways, Jenkins identifies the inner conflict growing in Bryon early on, and he ultimately aids Bryon in both pulling away from the Vinlanders and in seeking assistance with starting his life anew by removing the many tattoos that mar his face (the incredibly painful removal procedures portrayed in almost fetishistic, close-up interstitial sequences). Jenkins’ story occurs largely on the margins, though, rendering Skin as a gripping interpersonal drama that nevertheless only scratches the surface of its weighty themes.
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