The marketing campaign behind A24’s Under the Skin has had a hard time of it, only able to rely on a subdued mix of Scarlett Johansson’s sexuality and atmospheric visual oddities, as its storyline and approach don’t lend themselves well to hooking huge audiences all at once. Their latest effort crosses mediums from computers to mobile phones, thanks to the clever ad above seen on Craigslist, hinting at a very peculiar kind of connection that will be made if you respond to the ad.
Under the Skin is basically about Johansson as an extraterrestrial roaming the Scottish countryside and giving men her own brand of lovemaking that they don’t get to walk away from. All you have to do to follow the path to her heart (or whatever) is dial the phone number inserted into the "when is the last time you touched someone" message. Instead of some involved back-and-forth between you and a recording, this just features her dispassioned voice telling callers to "Come to me." Talk about starting a catch phase phenomenon.
The call then disconnects and a text message is sent with the website T0uch-Me.com, which has a bunch of particle pixels that all come together to form ScarJo’s character in her black bra. But you can manipulate the picture with the mouse pointer, and it’s a nice way to spend 15 seconds, though it doesn’t necessarily make me any more interested in the movie than I was before.
Additionally, a slew of posters have come out over the past few days, with the following three seductive images courtesy of via IndieWire.
Another group of posters, all of which you can find at our sister site Giant Freakin’ Robot, also heavily promote the hashtagged "#UnderTheSkin" for social media purposes. The images are beautiful enough to serve as posters on their own, so the tag is kind of annoying, but I can deal with it.
Hitting theaters on April 4, Under the Skin has been getting extremely positive early reviews for director Jonathan Glazer’s unique vision and trippy take on what might not otherwise be an incoherent story. It’s one of my more anticipated features of the year, and not just because ScarJo is fully in the buff for it. But that’s certainly not a drawback. You can hear her talking about that aspect of the filming below.
