In Her Skin is a 2009 Australian film detailing the true story of the murder of 15-year old Rachel Barber. When Rachel, an aspiring dancer, doesn't come home one night, her parents are determined to find her, but the police show little interest in the case and insist that she ran away. It turns out that Caroline Robertson, the family's former babysitter, had crippling self-esteem issues and became obsessed with Rachel, believing she had a perfect life. As Caroline's mental state deteriorates, she begins planning to kill Rachel and assume her identity.
Ruth Bradley and Kate Bell play Caroline and Rachel, respectively, Guy Pearce and Miranda Otto play Rachel's parents, and Sam Neill plays Caroline's father.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: This certainly seems to have been the case for Caroline's parents. Caroline was a ticking time bomb throughout her adolescence. All the signs were there that she either kill herself, kill someone else, or both, but her mother was too weak-willed and her father too disengaged to intervene before the inevitable happened.
- Ambiguously Gay: It's strongly implied but not stated up front that Caroline's fixation on Rachel is due to underlying sexual attraction as much as it is due to jealous resentment. While the film leaves this ambiguous, in life Caroline is a lesbian.
- Ax-Crazy: Caroline has crippling self-esteem problems and is emotionally unbalanced, with the walls of her room filled with messages about how she hates herself. Her emotional distress leads her to murder Rachel in the hope of assuming her identity.
- Death by Materialism: Rachel is lured to her death due to her desire to get enough money to buy a pair of expensive dance shoes.
- Decoy Protagonist: We follow Rachel's family for the first twenty minutes, before the narrative switches to Caroline's perspective.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Caroline becomes completely obsessed with Rachel, who seems to have everything she doesn't.
- Hate Sink: The police investigating Rachel's disappearance are portrayed as incompetent, callous, and uncaring, not even bothering to investigate properly, and blowing off Rachel's parents and mocking their concern for their daughter.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: Caroline contacts Rachel with an offer to interview her for a "psychiatric study", telling Rachel that she can't tell anyone about this. Rachel doesn't question this at all, despite it being fairly suspicious.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Caroline feels unwanted by her parents and socially isolated, having endured bullying for years, and longs to be the popular and outgoing Rachel, who seems to have been well-cared for all her life.
- I Just Want to Be You: The motive for the murder. The homely, socially awkward Caroline Robertson, as the title implies, wants nothing more than to be the beautiful, popular, and desirable Rachel Barber. Caroline's obsession with Rachel eventually leads to murder.
- Mercy Kill: Caroline tries to give one to Rachel, as she tells her to close her eyes and think of something happy before killing her, which she expects to be quick. She then learns the hard way that strangling someone isn't as easy as it appears.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Caroline has a moment of this when she looks at herself and Rachel's dead body in the mirror, and it finally dawns on her just how serious and depraved her actions are.
- Only Friend: Caroline's supervisor at work is the closest thing she has to a friend, not that it keeps her from snapping.
- Parental Neglect: Caroline's parents have gone through a bad divorce, with her mother openly saying she hates her, while her father is barely aware of her problems and seems annoyed at having to give her any attention. As a result, Caroline becomes fixated on Rachel, who has a loving family in comparison.
- Police Are Useless: One of the worst examples of this. The police don't seem to care about Rachel's disappearance, barely giving it any attention and turning a blind eye to any evidence that there was foul play involved. They even mock Rachel's parents and blame them for overreacting. Making it even worse is that the police in real life really were this unhelpful.
- Psycho Lesbian: It's strongly implied that part of Caroline's obsession with Rachel is as much due to (probably unadmitted) sexual attraction as it is to jealousy, as she thinks and speaks of Rachel in eroticized terms. Caroline Robertson is a lesbian in life.
- Psychopathic Womanchild: Caroline seems very emotionally underdeveloped for a 19-year old. One example is when she's seen holding a teddy bear while following the news about Rachel's disappearance.
- There Are No Therapists: It should be obvious to anyone that Caroline is in serious need of help (and Caroline herself says so), but no one catches on in time. Her father is aware that she has depression, but treats her problems as an annoyance and does little to help until she goes off the deep end.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: While becoming obsessed with Rachel, we see Caroline run up to her and ask her to be her best friend, while Rachel looks coldly at her and shakes her head. Given Caroline's mental state, it's unlikely that this even happened, it's strongly implied to be her warped Imagine Spot. In real life, Caroline did ask Rachel to be her best friend, but Rachel's response was more bemused than hostile.
- Tragic Villain: Caroline is consumed with self-loathing, neglected by her parents, and has been bullied and isolated her entire life, ultimately going off the deep end and murdering Rachel in the belief that she could assume the girl's identity.
- Villain Protagonist: The vast majority of the film follows Caroline.
- Villain Song: The film uses John Butler's song "Caroline" as this. The song was written before the film was made, but the lyrics are highly applicable to Caroline's state of mind.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Caroline is a depraved murderer, but it's because she's snapped from her self-loathing and complete social isolation.
