The Horror Show
Comforting Skin
by Derek Franson
I feel like with each year that passes tattoos gain more popularity. Tattoos have gained such popularity that they have gained acceptance in the workplace, I remember being a kid and my mom telling me that if I ever got a tattoo that I would never get a job. Tattoos have even gained prominence in popular culture. If someone can sell a horror movie about tattoos then anything can happen. Comforting Skin is the first and only horror movie I’ve seen about a tattoo. Even though I don’t have any, a part of me still enjoyed this movie.
Koffie (That’s her name, I wish I was making that up) is in an all-time low, she’s clean now but she can’t seem to get laid and that’s causing her to be very self-conscious. She lives with her best friend and roommate, Nathan. She’s that friend-zone-girl, she’s clearly in love with Nathan but he sees her only as a friend. Down the hall lives Synthia, a party girl who is well past her prime. Koffie is jealous of Synthia’s abilities to attract the opposite sex. Koffie, on a whim, decides she’s going to treat herself to a tattoo; something unique, original, and most importantly, one no one else has. She feels good about the tattoo at first, but her life starts to get worse and she hits bottom. Deciding to end it all, Koffie grabs a knife, but her tattoo moves to her wrist and she hears a voice telling her no. She freaks out and is ready to remove the tattoo with a cheese grater. The tattoo calms her down and they begin talking and getting to know one another. She then has sex with her tattoo (Yeah actually that happens) and they fall in love. However, the tattoo is the ever jealous lover, and it doesn’t like how close Koffie and Nathan are. Synthia sees how special the tattoo makes Koffie feel and Synthia is willing to do anything for that feeling.
This was a strange movie and made me feel awkward at times, like the tattoo sex scene. However, there were parts of this movie that were incredibly relatable, well at least in the first half. In the opening moments, Koffie is crying by herself in the bathroom because she is so alone and wants any kind of love she can find. I know not all people have been there, but I know people who have and cried because of it. It really struck a chord early on with me. Like, even though Koffie is clean now, she was willing to use again just to be with her ex because she didn’t want to be alone. That’s some powerful stuff there.
In the second half of the film Koffie just becomes, for a lack of a better word, an idiot. The moment the tattoos reveals itself to be alive she puts down the knife she planned on offing herself with and picks up a gun. If she really wanted to die why didn’t she go to the gun in the first place? It’s probably because she was trying to either make a statement or be dramatic. Also, what was she going to do with a gun, shoot off her tattoo? That doesn’t really seem effective. Then, she runs to the kitchen and grabs a cheese grater. Yes more effective, but why didn’t she do that in the first place? A few scenes later she gets rid of the gun, and it never appears in the movie again. The gun served zero purpose. I would have forgiven the movie if she intended to use it to kill herself. Nope, just points it at a tattoo.
I feel like Comforting Skin did a good job of making the viewer unsure about whether or not this was a magical tattoo or if Koffie was just crazy. I lean towards the latter, but that’s not important. Initially, everyone thinks Koffie has a boyfriend the entire time and she’s talking on the phone in her room, but she’s actually talking to her tattoo. Towards the end of the movie when she professes to Nathan about her love for her tattoo, you can see how far gone Koffie really is. She is sitting in the cab just mumbling to herself over and over again about how it’s special, unique, and that it only belongs to her. The film also never really addresses whether or not the other characters actually see her tattoo moving. It looks like they may but they could be responding to her behavior. Nathan stares at Koffie when the tattoo is on her face but it’s unclear that he’s staring at the tattoo or he’s staring at her because of how crazy she is behaving. I like that this movie actually lets the viewer form their own conclusions rather than spelling it out.
One problem this movie does have is that its tone is confusing. The beginning of the movies felt like this real and depressing story about a girl out of rehab trying to find love. The middle of the movie turned into this quirky like romantic comedy between a girl and her tattoo. I see the trailer in my head now, “What happens when a girl falls in love with her tattoo? (Queue silly antics between her and her tattoo and maybe an ice cream and pizza date) She’ll be keeping up appearances because this summer love is only skin deep.” That’s stretching it though, but in all honesty the middle of the movie genuinely felt like that. The final third of the movie actually turned horror, once the tattoo was getting all jealous. However, the movie never really felt scary. It was suspenseful and I was on the edge of my seat, but it wasn’t scary. It kind of went everywhere else, I was kind of hoping that it would be like a demonic tattoo or something and would eat people but no.
This movie at its very core is an allegory for abusive relationships. Well allegory is pretty liberal, it’s straight up about abusive relationships. A tattoo is something not easily changeable. It’s like people who are in abusive relationships, they often make the same mistakes because of how they feel they should be treated. Unless the person is willing to get help and change, it will keep happening. Some people are so desperate for love that they are willing to let others deface their body. I know deface is a strong word but people get tattoos often because they want to look on the outside how they feel on the inside and are willing to let someone do that to them. She was self-abusing on the inside and literally brought that to the outside. She eventually discovered that her tattoo was getting around, not like that though. The guy at the parlor gave this tattoo to a bunch of other girls too. People who are the abuser in relationships are often also cheaters. Comforting Skin is a much deeper movie than it lets on, it goes to show you that there is much more below the surface.
I was curious about the writer, director, producer Derek Franson but he doesn’t appear to exist before this movie, well at least on IMDB. I stalked around the internet a bit and found his Linkedin page. He’s done a teaser for a film years ago that has still yet to be made and a music video. This marks his debut into feature length films, and with great success I might add. His other projects were all years ago and what he’s been up to is a bit of mystery. However, I do look forward to anything he has planned for the future. So long as it goes past the skin and directly into the heart like Comforting Skin has.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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