The Reflecting Skin

Did You Know?

• The cult British band Coil used dialogue excerpts from the film on the track Omlagus Garfungiloops on their 1992 album Stolen & Contaminated Songs.
• The Scottish band River Head used a still from the film on the cover of their 1992 single sided 7-inch EP Was Away / Haddit.
• The American musician Ethel Cain used dialogue excerpts from the film on the track "Amber Waves" from her 2025 studio recording Perverts.

Plot

Eight-year-old Seth Dove lives on an isolated Idaho prairie in the 1950s. He and his friends inflate a frog with a reed and leave it by the road; when a local English widow, Dolphin Blue, stops to inspect it, Seth shoots the frog with a slingshot, causing it to explode over her. Seth lives at a gas station with his harsh mother Ruth and detached father Luke. His brother Cameron is away on military service. Seth is sent to apologise to Dolphin, who is haunted by her husband's suicide. Taking her claim of being "two hundred years old" literally, and having just learned about vampires, Seth concludes she is a vampire. After his friend Eben goes missing, Seth and Kim investigate Dolphin's house, destroying her belongings. They spy on her moaning and touching herself, then flee. Seth later finds Eben's body in a water cistern. Authorities suspect Seth's father Luke, who had a sexual encounter with a teenaged boy; believing himself doomed, Luke douses himself with gasoline and incinerates himself.

Production

Philip Ridley wrote the screenplay after completing a sequence of artworks titled American Gothic while studying at St Martin's School of Art. He aimed to create a "mythical once upon a time never-world" based on his childhood impressions of America from literature and film. After directing two short films and completing the screenplay for The Krays, Ridley received $1.5 million from the BBC, British Screen and Zenith Productions to shoot in Crossfield, Alberta, Canada. Working with cinematographer Dick Pope, Ridley channelled influences such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. He personally spray-painted the wheatfields a brighter yellow and shot exterior scenes at 'magic hour' for maximum intensity. The film features Viggo Mortensen in one of his first starring roles.

Release

The Reflecting Skin was theatrically released in the United Kingdom in November 1990 by Virgin Vision. In the United States, Miramax Films gave it a limited theatrical release on 28 June 1991. The film was unavailable on home video for many years after its initial VHS release. A widescreen DVD was released in Japan in 2005 but quickly went out of print, leaving only a poor-quality German Blu-ray and a full frame American DVD from Echo Bridge Entertainment. In 2015, British distributor Soda Pictures released a limited Blu-ray SteelBook edition with a director-approved HD remaster, director's commentary, two new documentaries, Ridley's early short films, and a signed art card. A standard edition Blu-ray and DVD followed in March 2016. The remaster was later made available on BFI Player in 2016, and Film Movement released it on Blu-ray and DVD in the US and Canada in 2019. In 2020, The Criterion Channel added the film as part of a double feature with Days of Heaven.

Reception

The Reflecting Skin premiered at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, where critics declared it "déjà un culte" before leaving the auditorium. Word of mouth about the film, especially the exploding frog opening, led to extra screenings. It won 11 international awards at other film festivals. Some critics were outraged by its "abnormal situations and morbid characters," but Roger Ebert praised it, saying it reminded him of Blue Velvet but was better. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Ridley a visionary and the film haunting. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times described it as an amazing film with dark humor that gets away with everything. The film was a box office bomb in North America, grossing $17,042. It has since been reappraised as an essential art film/horror hybrid. Rotten Tomatoes reports an 88% approval rating based on 17 reviews. Reviewing the 2015 restoration, Jason Gorber called it a strange, wonderful film. Rowan Righelato of The Guardian described it as a gothic masterpiece. Mark Kermode said it is a proper cult film.