Beyond Black Widow: Scarlett Johansson’s Most Captivating Role Lives in This Sci-Fi Thriller

Scarlett Johansson is best known for her appearance as Black Widow, but her talent extends far beyond the boundaries of Marvel’s multiverse. While Black Widow showcases her action prowess and surprising comedic timing, her most intimate and chilling performance remains in the sci-fi thriller Under the Skin.

Directed by Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest), one of today’s most masterful creators of the sci-fi thriller, Under the Skin follows an alien disguised as a woman who consumes unsuspecting men. Johansson’s challenge as an actor went beyond the usual: in addition to embodying this abstract alien creature, she was actually driving around Scotland, hitting on non-actors to generate footage for the film. Most of the men she encounters in the film had no idea they were being filmed until after the fact. The choice to include non-actors in the film forces the alien into the real world, and because she is a superstar who could be recognized at any moment, Johansson’s real-life identity is brought into the film too.

Jonathan Glazer’s Innovative Approach to Guerrilla Filmmaking

Johansson looks out of place in the streets of Glasgow not because of any visual cues about the alien-ness of her character, but because of her status as a superstar: the audience recognizes her in a crowd of everyday people. Incredibly, during filming Scarlett Johansson was very rarely identified by members of the public, likely because they just didn’t expect her to be there. In the film, she drives or walks, followed by hidden cameras, and even as she tries to melt into the crowd, she is drawn out of it by the very act of being filmed, often centered in the frame, always tracked by the shot.

In a pivotal scene, Johansson walks down a street in tight, acid-washed jeans and a fur jacket, tracked by a camera in a moving vehicle. The shot is full of regular people who have no idea they’re being filmed, and then she trips and falls. The non-actors around her help her up and make sure she’s okay. This display of simple human decency is the beginning of the alien’s entry into the human world, becoming more empathetic and human herself. By using guerrilla filmmaking to illustrate this point, director Jonathan Glazer more effectively illustrates that people are kind and will help someone when they can.

Under the Skin begins as a creepy sci-fi movie about an alien predator, and becomes a profound study in embodied experience, tracking the alien’s developing understanding of humanity and the place she could occupy within it. The alien’s transformation is conveyed through Johansson’s almost entirely silent performance. Her performance is remarkably subtle, often defined by a deliberate lack of expression, which makes her emotional development clearer and more meaningful by contrast.

From the beginning of the film, Johansson’s performance is more about being an observer than it is about being observed. Even as she uses sex appeal to lure men into her van, Johansson hardly performs sexuality in her body language or voice at all. She doesn’t draw attention to herself on purpose. Instead, her gaze is fixed on the men she’s hunting, energy focused outward. She is the predator watching her prey, scanning the streets for who’s next. Observation is the key to Johansson’s performance and to Under the Skin on the whole.

A Shift Toward Human Tenderness

The alien watches people to hunt them, but by watching them she also learns about their emotional lives, their decency, and their beauty. In a critical scene, the alien picks up a man with a facial disfigurement. They chat in the van. She asks if he has friends or a girlfriend, or if he’s ever had a girlfriend. He hasn’t. She asks if he gets lonely. He doesn’t respond. She says, “You have very nice hands. You have beautiful hands.” She holds his hands and encourages him to touch her face, which he does, before taking him inside to consume him. Crucially, he’s the first person she lets go without consuming him. The subtleties of Johansson’s performance convey real hesitation after having connected with the man personally and emotionally, a real emotional breakthrough for the character.

For much of the film, Johansson’s performance is intentionally guarded, revealing little. As she accrues experience with people, her expression softens and becomes more naturalistic. After the alien crosses over into the human world, she becomes truly vulnerable for the first time, transitioning from predator to potential prey. As this transition takes place, Johansson’s gaze turns inward, observing herself as a part of humanity for the first time. She befriends a man and stays at his home. She observes her body in a mirror, tracing it lightly with her hands. Her expression is softer, less laser-focused on others as she becomes one of them. The beginnings of her emotional transformation make the ultimate fate of the alien even more tragic.

At the end of Under the Skin, the alien ends up in the woods where she’s molested by a logger. She runs away from him, but he catches up and attempts to sexually assault her. In the struggle, he peels away her skin, revealing a hard, gray, featureless body beneath. The body beneath is like a mask, hard and unchanging, illegible. The body is not sexed, more like a rough bronze statue than a person. In his horror, the logger lights the alien on fire, and the film ends. Her integration into human subjectivity makes her subject to human paradigms of violence and victimhood. It is her openness to human goodness that puts her at risk of suffering from human cruelty.

Under the Skin is a profound meditation on embodied human experience, compassion, connection, and the ways people fail at those same things. The film is a visual feat, with wonderful, bizarre sequences recalled in newer films like The Substance. The guerrilla filmmaking and director Jonathan Glazer’s vision are both phenomenal, and the film wouldn’t work without those components. But Under the Skin rides on Johansson’s performance, which is suitably minimalist, like the rest of the film, allowing space for real tenderness and curiosity to bleed through. Without Johansson’s incredible talent and intuition as a performer, Under the Skin wouldn’t be nearly as creepy, touching, or devastating as it is.

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