As of October 13, 2026, Jonathan Glazer’s unsettling sci-fi film Under the Skin is free to stream on Tubi, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel, Plex, Fandango, and Xumo Play. It’s also available on Netflix. Streaming catalogs vary by location and change over time, so check your local listings.
Online, the film is often remembered for clips of Scarlett Johansson in various states of undress. That fragmentary attention can obscure its stranger, more unsettling whole. Under the Skin earned a host of award nominations and appeared on several lists of the best films of the 21st century, but the full film is a very different experience from the clips circulating online.
Johansson plays an unnamed woman who hunts for lost and lonely people in a Scottish city. She lures potential victims to isolated places, where they disappear. The 2000 novel behind the film spells out the premise: its protagonist, Isserley, is bait in an extraterrestrial trap, abducting humans to be turned into an expensive delicacy for an alien species. Glazer leaves his lead unnamed and keeps much of that explanation offscreen.
The result is a loose, Lynchian adaptation open to several readings. On the surface, it resembles an arthouse take on Species, with Johansson’s character targeting people whose disappearance is unlikely to be noticed. There are no panicked government agents or conspiracy theorists trying to explain what’s happening. The film offers little exposition, and its protagonist offers even less.
Look closer, and the story could be about an alien’s first days as a human, a cultural commentary, or an extended metaphor for sex and sexuality. Johansson’s character seems curious about ordinary details, from ants and other people to her own body. Even as she leads men to their deaths, she doesn’t seem especially vindictive. It’s simply what she does.
The film’s form reinforces that detached point of view. Nearly 14 minutes pass before anyone speaks aloud, and music often fills the space where dialogue might go. Many scenes use hidden cameras and unusual angles, while most of the cast, apart from Johansson, consists of amateurs or newcomers. The result can feel less like a conventional thriller than an alien reality show.
That approach makes the film a tough watch. The long, still shots can feel like student films, and something seems off almost from the start. The source article argues this helps explain why the movie isn’t better known and why it bombed. Stick with it, though, and some of its images are hard to forget.
Under the Skin also completes an informal trilogy of Johansson roles that play with her public image. She had been acting since she was 10, became a household name by 19 after her breakout role in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, and had recently appeared in The Avengers.
In 2013’s Her, Johansson voices Samantha, an AI-powered operating system who is literally a commodity. In 2014’s Lucy, she plays the title character, who is abused and ignored before becoming the most powerful person on the planet. Under the Skin completes the sequence by turning Johansson into a concealed threat, like a trapdoor spider in celebrity skin.
The trilogy’s roles move from a voice sold as software in Her to a body transformed into a weapon in Lucy, then to a predator hidden beneath Johansson’s public image in Under the Skin. Glazer leaves that last role’s motives mostly unexplained, just as he leaves the film’s larger meaning open.
