‘Skincare’ Movie Review: Elizabeth Banks Delivers Highly Enjoyable Performance In Otherwise Middle-Of-The-Road Film

In the thriller Skincare, Hollywood aesthetician Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) is on the verge of launching her own skin care line when a competitor sets up shop across from her salon. As her new rival Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) attracts clients with his trendy marketing, Hope finds herself the victim of increasingly invasive online attacks. Convinced that someone is trying to destroy her reputation and business, Hope confides in new friend/aspiring life coach Jordan (Lewis Pullman) to uncover her saboteur.

Banks gives a highly enjoyable performance, portraying varying degrees of unhingedness through a character struggling under the stressors of fame, rent and sexual harassment. Without her, the film is basically anchorless. In terms of the thriller elements, I venture that the red herring won’t be particularly persuasive for anyone apart from the main characters who aren’t in on the scheme. The culprit behind Hope’s ill fortunes was guessable within the first half hour. 

While the thriller trope of flashing back to break down each crime in retrospect can be tedious, this movie might have benefited from it; not only were motives a little blurry by the climax, but some of the final twists, no doubt meant to provide definitive answers, end up feeling rather ambiguous in the context of the movie as a whole. Certain script, cinematographic and directing choices work against the film’s conclusion, which unfortunately disorients what is otherwise a pretty wild final sequence (again to Banks’s credit).

For a film that tackles beauty in Hollywood, it’s short on the triggers and pitfalls that lead to many movies of this sort feeding the very problems they claim to confront. Skincare does a decent job of depicting the pains of being a woman in the beauty industry and the public eye without falling into the trap of cashing in on the toxic values being condemned – for example, no mentions of specific weights, diet plans, beauty regimes and gendered expectations that filmmakers love to mock by laying out for women precisely what is expected of them. (You know the classic: Our heroine hasn’t eaten in six weeks due to the social oppression she faces on the day-to-day. Here, let us show you, via this slow pan across her body in a bikini underscored by suggestive music. Do you feel like trash yet, ladies?)

Skincare largely avoids such strategies; the pressures of Hollywood are tactfully present in Banks’ performances, particularly those in which she confronts her reflection in mirrors throughout the movie. (Keep a lookout for one especially compelling shot in a gun store.)

There’s not quite enough excitement for the mystery to hit home and not quite enough emphasis on female power to avoid any feminist messaging being slightly undercut by attempts at suspense. Neither the majority of thriller enthusiasts or so-bad-it’s-good enjoyers will be fully satisfied by this film, which presents somewhere in that vast space between enchanting and ludicrous. If you’re looking for a casual 96-minute watch, Skincare delivers some great performances, a satisfying end to a powerplay by an overconfident man and a weird look into the fictional world of Hope Goldman inspired by a real Hollywood scandal.