Here’s an Under the Skin viewing tip: know that Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who inhabits the skin and clothing of a human female, scours the Scottish Highlands luring unsuspecting male hitchhikers into her nondescript panel van before seducing them to a nearby location, where she leaves them suspended in some sort of dark, amniotic goo -- their muscles to be harvested as a delicacy for an alien planet. The movie won’t necessarily tell you any of this, but I had the good fortune of access to the film’s production notes. You’re welcome.

Jonathan Glazer -- loosely adapting Michel Faber’s otherworldly novel -- holds his cards close to the vest, unspooling his abstract examination of human identity with a hypnotic fog of metronomic beats and mesmerizing vision. He’s clearly more interested in creating a unique viewer experience than in providing a point A to point B plot line with conventional dialogue. But his screenplay -- which he co-wrote with Walter Campbell -- didn’t actually begin that way.

The initial draft was a more faithful adaptation of the novel but was eventually scrapped following a breakthrough moment that altered the direction of the entire production. While filming with Johansson in character as the predatory alien, fully costumed in cheap wig, bad lipstick, and gaudy fur coat, Glazer became obsessed with disguising the actress and plopping her into the real world to intermingle with the unknowing citizens of Glasgow while his cameras rolled. The guerrilla footage captures an honest, horrifying reality as she so effortlessly recruits her human prey from a swath of random, unwitting citizens. Those used in the film later signed release forms after being made aware of the ruse.

We watch the alien character return -- with hapless victim in tow -- to her sinister abode which soon turns into a dungeon of horrors for the unsuspecting man as he follows her slowly through the room, both disrobing to the trippy beats of Mica Levi’s techno soundtrack, before the man descends into the black, tarry floor. Beneath the goopy surface we see the man is not alone. He’s encased in a blue void along with other victims… and more are to come.

This pattern is repeated as the alien’s trips to nightclubs, bars, and beaches rend a seemingly endless supply of poor lost souls who fall victim to whatever she is doing. These scenes of entrapment, though repetitious, are marked with an oddly calming serenity, as if we too are being spun into her sticky web of deceit.  Then that calm gets suddenly interrupted by a shockingly horrifying revelation.

Something also happens to our alien protagonist, though much slower and a lot less violent. We soon realize we’re watching her slow journey of transformation from an un-individuated alien life form into something in between alien and human as she slowly becomes infected with a sense of self and human identity.

Glazer’s vision comes into more distinct clarity as we begin to recognize the multiple levels his story is working on. Enhanced by his surreptitious point-of-view technique that allows each of us to wonder whether or not we would fall victim to that pretty woman in a van, he clearly has something important to say about we miserable humans looking at ourselves through the objective eyes of others. Then there's some kind of reverse misogynistic ploy that allows male viewers to look into a fear women know all too well.

Plus, on yet another level, there’s the powerful cinematic trance we’re put under by Glazer’s film. A spell so strong, we no longer care what the film is saying, nor does it matter that the obscure plot has stopped making any sense. Like the first time we watched Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. or Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we realize we’re watching something cinematically significant -- and we’re honored to be along for the ride. The details are blurry and ring in our ours, but they linger on and on, perhaps only to be put to bed by a second viewing.

(Released by A24 and rated “R” for graphic nudity, sexual content, some violence and language.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.