JustWatch

Metal Skin

1994

Speeding Cars... Crazy Women... Devil worship... The world is out of control!

Psycho Joe loves one thing: fast cars! When he gets a job at a local supermarket, Joe meets fellow "petrol head" Dazey, who quickly becomes his idol and best friend. Soon after, Joe falls for Savina, a goth girl who practices black magic. But Savina has already fallen for Dazey and will do anything to get him -- including using Joe's feelings for her. In true Shakespearean fashion, this trio race down the road to tragedy.

Aden Young Tara Morice Nadine Garner Ben Mendelsohn Chantal Contouri Petru Gheorghiu Arthur Angel Richard Sutherland Anita Smith Tommy Dysart Vince D'Amico

Alternative Titles

Speed, Metalliko derma, Метална кожа, Juventud frenetica

Genres

Drama Action

Premiere

14 Sep 1994

Canada Toronto International Film Festival

Theatrical

21 Feb 1994

Germany18

04 May 1995

AustraliaMA 15+
USA

Australia

04 May 1995

TheatricalMA 15+

Canada

14 Sep 1994

Premiere Toronto International Film Festival

Germany

21 Feb 1994

Theatrical18

USA

04 May 1995

Theatrical

115 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jack Russo ★★★★

A suburban petrol tragedy huffing the fumes of the inevitable. These surfaces are all covered in grime, these relationships are all coated in something toxic, and Wright's aesthetic nihilism cannot picture a place beyond the callous games teenagers play with each other in their death race towards the finish line of young love fractured by broken homes. Many stunning sequences of stylistic angst pierced by the unflinching honesty of destructive people continuing to destroy themselves within the formal structure of emotional continuity, discarding sequential rhythms for pained invocations of what has come to inform the present with such a tactile remembrance - of blue paint, shattered glass, chicken blood - that these bitter memories and hopeless futures feel concurrent above all else; no geography in the final pursuit, just the metal cage of two lives caught in cyclical collision with one-another.
Review by mosquitodragon ★★★★ 5

In my late teens, grim but stylish nihilist films were very much in keeping with my own personal taste - yeah, me and about every other 18 year old dude in the western hemisphere, I suppose. I'm not sure how it played around the rest of the world other than being the film that got Russell Crowe noticed by Hollywood, but Romper Stomper was a big deal in Australia. Everyone was talking about it. At the risk of being so 90's it will make your eyes bleed, I remember seeing Sonic Youth live and Thurston Moore's most committed attempt at stage banter with the Sydney crowd was to mumble "I went and saw Romper Stomper last night. I thought it…
Review by Alexei Toliopoulos ★★★★

Full throttle hectic. The editing is spectacular and tense presenting a grim world of bleak connections in a way like I've never seen before. There's this unsettling feeling of pain throughout that makes for a film unlike any gear-head picture I've ever seen either.
Not quite sure if I'd describe it as traditionally disturbing but there's something about this one that I feel will stick with me for a minute.
Very cool.
Review by Felix Hubble ★★★★

Extremely dope and ambitious idiosyncratic Aussie gem ripe for rediscovery. Shades of Possession and Pierrot le fou in a very different context.
Review by Odie Arbuckle ★★★

I hadn't taken a look into Geoffrey Wright's filmography until recently. I always assumed that his career followed the same route as other Australian directors like Phillip Noyce or Peter Weir: make a couple successful films in Australia, then set sail for bigger budgets and bigger pictures in Hollywood. Romper Stomper was a genuine hit in Australia and generated some buzz overseas, but Wright never really broke out. Hollywood sees Australia (and the rest of the Anglosphere) as the farm league for promising directors and actors, who we snatch up as soon as they make a promising movie in their homeland. Wright was the equivalent of a failed MLB prospect; his lone production in Hollywood was 2000's Cherry Falls, which…
Review by henry 💿 ★½

every group of australian supermarket workers has:
-satan-worshipper w a crush on ben mendelsohn
-girl w the worst pixie cut youve ever seen
-ben mendelsohn
-crazy ass
Review by johnm1978 ★★★★

Mentally ill gearhead Joe likes fellow adrenaline junkie Dazey's girl Roslyn while devil worshipping goth Savina befriends Joe and employs black magic to steal Roslyn's womanizing sweetheart. At least that's where things stand at the start of Geoffrey Wright's frenetic wasted youth melodrama Metal Skin before he hits the gas and drives them all off a cliff. Frantic, fragmented editing and post-apocalyptic tropes mirror the speed-addled mind in a contemporary setting and I mean amphetamines not the souped up engines relentlessly whirring in the background. This superior but more difficult to pigeonhole follow up to the propulsive skinhead chaos of Romper Stomper features Ben Mendelsohn in an early role.
Review by Xavier RN ★★★★

i’ve never huffed petrol before, but i reckon the hazy, upsetting atmosphere of this movie got me at least partway there
Review by Roman Sowada ★★★½

The director talked about the block theory of time and the way this movie is structured - everything in the universe happens at the same time but we interpret it as linear in order to make sense of it.
A Tralfamadorian would love this movie.
Review by Connie 1

I could not watch this movie because this is not my thing so I won’t rate but seriously, the things that I do for Ben Mendelsohn.
Review by TrufflePig

Q&A with Geoffrey Wright.
Refreshing to see an Australian film commit to a completely unique vision that isn't an obvious genre play. Great cultural snapshot of an Australia we don't often see on screen.
Roadshow got a shout out from Geoffrey for stuffing up the marketing by trying to go too wide and focus on the cars.
Review by proofrock ★★★

Batshit and utterly boring in the same flash, this was director Geoffrey Wright’s near-immediate followup to Romper Stomper, chronicling a doomed young/aimless love rhombus between Psycho Joe (Aden Young, looks like Paul Scheer in an Ethan Hawke wig), Satan-worshipping Savina (Tara Morice), Dazey (Ben Mendelsohn), the careless and freshly dyed Clairol blue-black bad boy with whom Savina is obsessed, and Roslyn (Nadine Garner), Dazey’s ex, who he badly disfigured in a car accident. The setting: “Melbourne, 1994.”
Apart from Dazey, whose family builds racecars, the rest of the characters live in Requiem for a Dream style squalor, and/or with mentally ill parents (Joe’s Romanian dad is completely vacated, speaks gibberish, and shoots guns at the neighbors; Savina’s mom has OCD and…

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Where to watch

Metal Skin

Synopsis

Speeding Cars... Crazy Women... Devil worship... The world is out of control!

Cast

Director

Producers

Writer

Casting

Editors

Cinematography

Camera Operators

Additional Photography

Production Design

Set Decoration

Composer

Costume Design

Makeup

Studios

Country

Language

Alternative Titles

Genres

Releases by Date

Premiere

14 Sep 1994

Theatrical

21 Feb 1994

04 May 1995

Releases by Country

Australia

04 May 1995

Canada

14 Sep 1994

Germany

21 Feb 1994

USA

04 May 1995

Popular reviews

Where to watch

Metal Skin

Synopsis

Speeding Cars... Crazy Women... Devil worship... The world is out of control!

Cast

Director Director

Producers Producers

Writer Writer

Casting Casting

Editors Editors

Cinematography Cinematography

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Production Design Production Design

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Composer Composer

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup Makeup

Studios

Country

Language

Alternative Titles

Genres

Premiere

14 Sep 1994

Theatrical

21 Feb 1994

04 May 1995

Australia

04 May 1995

Canada

14 Sep 1994

Germany

21 Feb 1994

USA

04 May 1995

Popular reviews

Director

Producers

Writer

Casting

Editors

Cinematography

Camera Operators

Additional Photography

Production Design

Set Decoration

Composer

Costume Design

Makeup