Cold Skin

 It's a shame Nietzsche is firmly in the public domain - His estate would be making a killing from all the quotations of his on movies and books, especially after the rise of nerd culture.

 Cold Skin, a Spanish/French coproduction from 2017, begins with one such quote - the one about monster hunters and the abyss, of course - and then moves on to some semi-profound philosophical musings as the camera slowly pans up from underwater to focus on a handsome Englishman (David Oakes) standing on the railing, looking out wistfully at the horizon and providing the novelistic narration.

 It's a period piece, too, set in 1914, the cinematography is sweeping and beautifully realized, and the orchestral soundtrack (excellent, by the way, from Víctor Reyes) is heavy on the string section. We clearly have a classy horror movie on our hands.

 The Englishman, whose real name we never get, is dropped off at a desolate volcanic island. As a result of some unspecified drama, he's decided to spend a year away from everything as a weather official on an insignificant speck of land away from any major shipping lanes. The only other person in the island is Gruner, the keeper of the nearby lighthouse (the redoubtable Ray Stevenson), who's basically a pricklier, way more misanthropic version of Willem Dafoe's turn as a lighthouse keeper.

 On the first night on the island, our intrepid anchorite is assaulted in his shack by a mob of humanoid fish monsters, which he only manages to evade by holing up in the cellar. The next morning, shaken, he goes to the lighthouse to get help and an explanation from Gruner... and he's kicked out and told to fend for himself.

 That doesn't go too well; he survives the next night, but only by burning his shack down (oops!). So the next day he stalks Gruner as he goes to fetch water, and discovers that he's got a female fish person following him around ('she's tame!', Gruner says).

 Gruner decides to call our Englishman 'Friend', and almost at gunpoint agrees to let him to shack up in the lighthouse... as long as he pulls his own weight. From then on every few nights the fishfolk come out and lay siege to the lighthouse, and Friend and Gruner defend it by killing as many of them as they can.

 The fishmen only come out on some nights, as they fear any lights. During the long days spent in the lighthouse, Friend starts befriending Gruner's fish woman pet, whom he decides to call Aneris (the sister and opposite of Eris in Greek mythology, but also mermaid in Spanish backwards).

 Oh, and He also finds out that Gruner is of course banging her.

 So it's a little like The Shape of Water, then, but a little more rapey, and it later even turns into a love triangle! Troy McLure would approve, damn ichthyophyliacs pushing their fishy fetishes on us, etc.

 For all of this movie's unpredictability, the full arc is easy to see once all the pieces are on the table. There's a lot of action as the war between the lighthouse keepers and the fishfolk escalates, and it's pretty well shot, with frequent splashes of CGI blood and later explosions, but because this is not an action movie, the fights are edited into an uncomfortable rhythm of short, regular shots.

 Nor is it really a horror movie, either. From what I could find it's a pretty faithful to the Catalunyan novel it's adapting, but the adaptation suffers because without access to the characters' interior dialogue the main thrust of the story - the evolution of these two as they realize that maybe they're perpetrating an atrocity - doesn't really have the impact it should. There is something lacking here; More development, maybe, or the protagonist being less passive/a bit less of a cypher. As it is the story means well, and is mostly successful, but ends up being a little unsatisfying.

 There are also some pretty glaring questions, the main one being if Aneris is indeed the one who's summoning the hordes of her kin from the sea (as Friend quickly points out), why doesn't she just escape? She has the full run of the island, and could easily jump into the sea and swim away.
 And also, why do fish women have tits? If they lactate, why don't they have nipples, or fishfolk lips, for that matter?

 The script does manage to get in some lovely details. I liked how Aneris puts rocks over things ('the fool's afraid they'll float away otherwise', Gruner explains) or the explanation of why there would be a lighthouse on a place no ships ever pass. There's some humor, and some weird touches I enjoyed. The writing overall is good, with a lovely maritime tone, and it's well acted, especially by the older hands.

 In the end the movie does earn the Nietzsche quote - it's literally what the movie is about! It gets off on a warning, though- next time maybe choose something that hasn't been run to the ground a thousand times over.

 Cold Skin is a bit of a weird one - I understand why it failed to make a splash, but it's a shame more people haven't seen it. It's a beautiful movie, with some truly great direction and cinematography (by Xavier Genz and Daniel Aranyó, respectively). It's engaging, well acted and even if it stumbles getting its points across, it sets its sights pretty high and hits at least some of its marks without coming across as a joyless slog.