In Her Skin

Guy Pearce


Miranda Otto


Review by Barrett Hooper
NOW Magazine - 02/12/09

In Her Skin starts out as a drama about a husband and a wife (Guy Pearce, The Lord of the Rings' Miranda Otto) coping with the fact that their teenage daughter has gone missing. The police believe she's just a runaway and will likely turn up at a friend's house.

If the story had left it at that, the examination of a couple's grief in the face of loss, it would have been a heart-wrenching effort a notch or two above a Hallmark movie.

But the tone shifts into thriller mode when we're introduced to the missing girl's former babysitter, an emotionally disturbed young woman with a domineering father (Sam Neill) and a tenuous hold on reality. From here, In Her Skin plays out almost as you'd expect. Almost.

Strong performances, particularly by Pearce and Otto (I would have been content just to follow them through their harrowing experience) hold the whole thing together, along with the realization that the story, however cliched it sometimes is, is based on real events.


Guy Pearce Does Not Want to Live the Hollywood Dream
People say to me, 'You must be getting millions and the best Hollywood movies', and I'm like, 'No, I make little independent films that don't have any money, don't make any money, struggle to raise their money'.
I was getting offered studio films but they were terrible and there was absolutely no way I was going to make them.
I wasn't just resisting them because they weren't that great, I also didn't want to be a giant star, to be quite honest.
I like the balance of having my privacy but I can keep doing good work. I don't want to be Tom Cruise. But Australia seems to think I am anyway.