Tribeca Film Festival – When I say that writer/director Eli Powers’  Skin & Bone is all kinds of weird, I mean that in the very best way. There’s a drifter with a creepy eye, talking animals, blood-soaked nightmarish visions, and an unsettling performance by Amanda Seyfried. This is one short that will seep under your skin

Seyfried plays Serene, a reclusive woman who runs a farm. Thomas Sadoski stars as the drifter Christian, who randomly shows up, seeking work. He’s given a job but soon regrets it. He has hellish visions of naked men who Serene apparently turned into animals. Chilling voices tell him to kill her and thus free them. The film’s ambiguity works well. It’s unclear, at least until the final shot, whether or not Serene actually possesses some strange power that transforms men into livestock. Maybe it’s all in the drifter’s mind.

Powers worked with Seyfried before on his 2018 short Holy Moses. In Skin & Bone he draws quite a performance from her. She manages to be menacing while barely raising her voice, especially during one particular dinner sequence. In two scenes, she sings, opening up the possibility that maybe she’s a siren, luring men to an awful fate, and trapping them on the farm. Regardless, she gives quite a performance here, and so does Sadoski, to his credit. Both of their characters are unreliable, maybe on the edge of insanity.

The short contains some stellar editing and sound design, too. Seyfried’s singing takes on a beautiful, yet strange and eerie quality. In other scenes, Christian’s nightmares are shown in brief flashes, often bloody and disturbing, before the short cuts to a daytime scene.  It’s an unnerving juxtaposition of sound and imagery.

Skin & Bone boasts strong performances from its leads, Seyfried especially. She’s disquieting, yet seductive. Powers has a heck of a lot of talent as a filmmaker, and there’s much potential here for a feature. This short is a harrowing vision by a talented up-and-coming filmmaker.

8 Out of 10