By Thomas Hindmarch Published Oct 13, 2026, 12:08 AM EDT Thomas is a writer and author from Chicago, working out of Washington state, with subspecializations in comic books, horror movies, zombie outbreaks, and tabletop RPGs. His work has appeared in Lifewire, GameRant, Digital Trends, and Prima Games, including several official strategy guides. What to Watch You've seen that clip... now watch the whole movie
Image: A24/Everett Collection Under the Skin Sign in to your Polygon.com account Add Us Summary Generate a summary of this story Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap In the internet era, plenty of movies have gotten a sort of secondary fame by virtue of what you might call clip culture. One scene, or one joke, or even just one frame can go viral, independently of the movie that it's in. Everyone's seen that GIF of Chow Yun-fat giving a thumbs-up , but only a relative handful of people know it's from A Better Tomorrow II . There's a lot going on in Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce , but most horror fans only know of it because of Mathilda May's nudist vampire.
In some cases, this does the original work a quiet disservice, if only because that kind of selective editing can't help but take things out of context. It cuts out any and all greater meaning in order to create one more patch on the great quilt that is internet discourse.
Under the Skin is a good example. It's one of the creepiest movies of 2014, has landed on several "best films of the 21st century" lists , and was nominated for a host of awards, but the internet primarily remembers it because Scarlett Johansson spends most of the movie in various states of undress. As a result, it's easy to find short clips from Under the Skin , but only a relative handful of people have actually seen it in full. Fortunately, you now have an easy option to fix that. Under the Skin is streaming for free on multiple platforms, making it easier than ever to check out the entire movie for yourself.
In Under the Skin , Johannson plays an unnamed woman who preys upon the lost and lonely inhabitants of a city in Scotland. When she finds a prospective victim, she lures them to an isolated location and makes them disappear.
In the 2000 novel that Under the Skin is based upon, there is no ambiguity about what's happening. The woman (named Isserley in the book, but left deliberately nameless in the film) is the bait in an extraterrestrial trap: abducting humans so they can be turned into an expensive delicacy for an alien species.
Under the Skin , conversely, is a loose, Lynchian adaptation that lends itself to multiple interpretations. On the surface level, it's essentially an arthouse remake of Species , with Johannson's protagonist out to kill everyone she can find who won't be immediately missed. There are no panicked government agents or conspiracy theorists to explain the plot; all the exposition you get from Under the Skin is what Johannson gives you, and that isn’t much.
Scarlett Johannson in Under the Skin (2013) Source: A24 Get a little deeper, and it's a movie about an alien's first few days as a human, or a cultural commentary, or an extended metaphor for sex and sexuality. Johannson's protagonist often appears fascinated by the most mundane details in her environment, from ants to other people to her own body. Even when she…