If you’ve seen the trailer, you know how Under the Skin starts. The silhouette of a thick grey-black ring graces the frame, with its edges glowing with the same teal luminance of Tron. A lustrous light that moments before surged from a faint glimmer into a harshly bright light illuminates the back of the ring. As an abstract black object enters the ring, the image transitions into a white object. It’s seemingly the outside view of the objects from the previous image. The black orb-like object continues to push forward, until, suddenly, it becomes a beautiful human eye. This is the eye of Scarlett Johansson playing an alien. These starting images summarize the title, as many of the images in the film stand to do. See, the film literally begins under the skin. This is a fitting opening of the movie for a few reasons, and not just because its sets up the themes director and co-writer Jonathan Glazer explores throughout the film. The opening minutes also establish Skin’s overall aesthetic, combining visually dazzling special effects with naturalism. More important, though, is that just as it establishes the title with odd literalness, the film as a whole is procedurally literal. Under the Skin wears its disturbed alien heart on its intergalactic sleeve.

Defining the story proves to be a feat of mental and linguistic acrobatics, since so much of the plot is merely a key to unlock the aesthetic and artistic ambitions of Glazer’s ideas, but I’ll give it a go. Under the Skin is an adaptation of Michel Faber’s well received novel of the same name. An alien steals the form of a stunningly beautiful woman who, by no coincidence, I’m sure, has the under-emoting disposition and black-as-night hair as a woman on the way to a Goth nightclub. Johansson’s alien embodies the film’s atmosphere- eerie, detached, and full of gloom. It’s hypnotic. She plays the extraterrestrial cousin to Odysseus’ Sirens, driving around Scotland in a white van convincing men to return with her to her home. I’ll say it now: she’s fantastic in the role, continuing her streak after great performances in Don Jon and Her. They’re never heard from again, and although we see what she does with them, we can never be sure what their fate is. The film doesn’t answer this question, and as Glazer said during a Q&A after the screening, it’s a situation where the book’s answer was less interesting than the question. There’s a man on a motorcycle who’s also an alien and watches over our main character, but what role he has beyond that is unclear. For as matter of fact the film can be with its characters and trippy scenes, the most basic of narrative devices, exposition, is so opaque that half of this plot summary is never directly stated, explained, or even hinted at. If in a year’s time this winds up on Netflix, and I happened to flip it on by chance having never heard of it, Under the Skin would have been a dreadfully maddening experience for this reason.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that over the course of the film, she begins to question her own humanity, or lack of it, and begins to experiment with what it means to be a human. This is without a doubt the film’s weakest area. It’s obvious, tired, and what we’ve seen by countless other films, book, and TV shows at this point. It’s 2014. You have to try harder. If I were feeling harsh, I’d compare it to a mediocre Doctor Who episode with high-art ambitions.