This forgotten Lynchian nightmare should be a cult classic, and you can watch it for free

polygon.com:

There’s a movie, hiding in the recesses of Tubi, Roku Channel, and other ad-supported streaming services, that feels like watching a waking nightmare. It’s an indescribable movie, not really existing in any particular genre. It’s a horror movie, a drama, an arthouse film, and a work of grounded surrealism.

The film is The Reflecting Skin, and it opens with a gorgeous wheat field and a young child carrying an enormous bullfrog. “Look at this wonderful frog!” the boy, Seth, tells his friends. It’s an ominous phrase that will run through the movie, whether calling something wonderful or beautiful. We know that soon after these words are uttered, destruction follows. Surely enough, the frog meets a grisly end that sets the tone for the movie.

And maybe that’s why critics were so divided on it. On its release, it drew its share of detractors — Vincent Canby of the New York Times hated it — and fans, like Roger Ebert, who got in quite the argument with Gene Siskel about it. Ebert compared it to David Lynch, but better, saying “the tone was more carefully controlled.” Siskel said, “To me, the nightmares, I couldn’t relate to any of them particularly.”

But the film has plenty of nightmares to spare. It’s seen from the point of view of Seth, who lives in a remote part of Idaho, far from the nearest town. He has a couple playmates from nearby farms, while his father operates a gas station. The only other neighbor we really see is Dolphin, a woman in mourning over the death of her husband. Seth and his friends become convinced she’s a vampire from how she talks about her grief, suffering in near-silence in a house clad with whaling gear (giving the movie an iconic poster that drew me in when first I saw it somewhere in the recesses