Under the Skin

Under the Skin is the most alien science fiction film ever made — a work so committed to its extraterrestrial perspective that it barely functions as conventional narrative. Scarlett Johansson plays a being in human form driving a van through Scotland, luring men to their deaths in a black void that dissolves their bodies. Jonathan Glazer filmed many scenes with hidden cameras and non-actors who did not know they were being filmed, giving the entire movie a documentary eeriness.

Johansson strips away every trace of movie-star glamour. She watches humans with genuine curiosity and incomprehension, learning their behaviors the way an anthropologist might study a foreign species. Mica Levi's score — all scratching strings and alien tones — is the most unsettling soundtrack of the decade. The beach scene, where a family drowns while the alien watches without comprehension, is one of the most disturbing sequences in modern cinema. Glazer made a film that makes you feel what it would actually be like to be something inhuman wearing human skin.