Directed by Marina de Van
Starring Marina de Van, Laurent Lucas, Léa Drucker, Thilbault de Montalembert

There aren’t too many movies these days that can really make me squirm, or pardon the pun, really get under my skin. Every now and then there might be a particular scene or sequence that might make me uneasy or even twitch a bit in my seat. But not too often. In the 2025 film Bring Her Back, there were a couple of scenes that did just that. But again, it’s not the whole movie. I also don’t seem to have as big of an issue when something torturous is being done to someone else onscreen. But when a person is doing it to themselves, it just feels… more horrifying and harder to watch.

I had seen In My Skin when it first hit DVD, mainly because of hearing about the nasty subject matter, and was looking to see how graphic it would be. At that time, I was expecting some over-the-top gore, so it didn’t really make too much of an expression. Now, 20 years later, after it came out in 4K from Severin Films, I decided to give it another go, and it was like watching it for the first time.

The story is about Esther, a young French marketing consultant, who is making her way up the corporate ladder. One night at a party, she bangs her leg up against something while walking around a garden and slices up her leg. Strange thing is that she didn’t remember the injury hurting, not even realizing until later that evening that she had even injured herself. She even tells the doctor she visits the next day, who flat out tells her that’s kind of strange. She then starts to develop this fascination with her skin, tearing and digging into it.

She does her best to try and hide this new obsession, especially after causally mentioning it to her boyfriend and her co-worker but realizes they think something much worse than she does. She then starts to ‘dig into’ her new obsession in private, even renting a hotel room after a work function, just so she can continue the cutting in private. She even stages a car accident to use that as excuse for her cuts.

This was Marina de Van’s first feature film, after making several short films. When the film was first released, because she wrote, directs, and stars in it, there were a lot of assumptions that this story was autobiographical, which she denied. But now with this 4k release, there is an interview with de Van, where she sets the record straight about her traumatic childhood and her self-mutilation fixation. She says the film was releasing in a way since once it was done, she stopped with the self-harming, as if exorcising this inner demon.

With de Van as the main character, she is in pretty much every frame, so we follow her down this dark journey right from the beginning. She does an exceptional job sort of brushing off this new fascination but yet, you can tell she starts to have this interests in going further.

It does not take long to realize this is a very personal film. Depending on your background or familiarity with the subject matter, it will affect you differently. But no matter what, it is an immensely powerful film, and as I stated in the beginning, some scenes I found exceedingly difficult to watch. There are some sequences where we do not see the actual act, but the reaction on de Van’s face, which makes it just as disturbing as if we were actually seeing the act.

This film might not be for everyone, but while I found it hard to watch in some places, I did find the overall story very fascinating. If you are a gorehound looking for the next splatter fest, keep searching. But if you’re looking for a very powerful and moving film, one that could make you feel very uncomfortable, then this is one for you.