Skinwalker Ranch is a 2013 Found Footage Sci-Fi Horror film. As the name implies, it draws inspiration from folklore and myths surrounding the real-life Skinwalker Ranch
, otherwise known as Sherman Ranch, located in Ballard, Utah.
The Millers, a family that owns an runs a ranch in Utah, suddenly witness an unexplainable occurrence when their son Cody vanishes from thin air before their eyes. Determined to get his son back, Cody's father Hoyt (John Gries) enlists the help of a Paranormal Investigation team to uncover what happened to Cody and document the odd phenomenon happening on the ranch. However, despite the team's confidence to handle whatever they witness, before too long it becomes clear they might be in over their heads.
Skinwalker Ranch contains examples of:
- Alien Abduction: The ending implies this is what's really been going on at the ranch, with all the other activity possibly spinning off from the aliens' presence there.
- Aliens Steal Cattle: A cattle mutilation occurs during the investigation, with the trademark impossibly surgical cause of death being highlighted.
- Ambiguous Innocence: Sam comes off as knowing more about the occurrences at the ranch, and possibly even MDE's involvement with it, than he's willing to divulge. At the same time, he's the member of the crew least willing to take a hint at the growing dangers and leave, which could mean he's simply dead-set on documenting the ranch's oddities but could also hint at him having ulterior motives for not letting the operation be abandoned. In the climax of the film he's one of the people who isn't actually shown getting taken by the entity, and the figure in the final shot of the film interacting with the alien spacecraft might be him, implying that he's affiliated with the powers present at the ranch to the point of deliberately keeping the others there to ensure they don't escape.
- Apocalyptic Log: The MDE tape found by the crew shows snippets of the activity of research team that had previously been operating on the ranch, before the entity decides to take them all out.
- Ate His Gun: How Ray kills himself.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the end entity presiding over the ranch succeeds in either killing, capturing, or chasing off everyone involved in trying to investigate it.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Cody disappears right in the middle of his birthday party.
- Brown Note: Some aspect of whatever's haunting the ranch seems to have this effect, as Lisa begins having recurring nosebleeds while staying there. When it wants to it can make the effects far worse.
- Canis Major: The wolf the team encounters out on the ranch is gigantic.
- Creepy Child:
- While Cody himself isn't creepy, the apparitions the entity produces of him certainly are.
- Rebecca, the little girl shown in the tape found by the crew, is either possessed by or a manifestation of the entity at the ranch. She kills the entire research team that finds her and shows a Nightmare Face before killing the person recording the tape.
- Demonic Possession: After the second encounter with the giant wolf, Lisa apparently gets possessed by the entity and starts assaulting the rest of the crew, only to not remember any of it later one.
- Downer Beginning: The film opens up with Cody vanishing before his parents' eyes and them freaking out over it, during the poor kid's birthday no less.
- Downer Ending: Cody is never found, everyone either leaves the farm early, dies, or vanishes just like Cody, and the entity haunting the farm — implied to be aliens — is still at large. The only consolation is that it got caught on camera, but even then the person who found the footage is implied to have been eliminated as well.
- Driven to Suicide: One of the ways the entity can kill people is by forcing them to kill themselves. It inflicts this on one of the scientists in the video tape recording by making her stab herself in the neck with a syringe, then causes Ray to shoot himself in the mouth later on.
- Dwindling Party: Though the investigation team remains intact & cohesive for half of the film, once Matt gets ragdolled by the entity he's the first to leave, after which the climax sees the entity pick off/abducting everyone left on the ranch one by one, starting with Hoyt and ending with Britton.
- Eldritch Location: Just like in the myths it's based on, the ranch is home to an ominous presence of some sort that causes a slew of oddities and otherworldly scares. The ending posits that this presence is extraterrestrial.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: The Millers' dog is shown in one scene to be able to sense the entity when it manifests, which unfortunately results in it immediately getting killed.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Whatever's haunting the ranch manifests in quite a few distinct supernatural phenomenon, such as floating orbs of light, giant monster wolves, invisible and visible apparitions, and aliens. Though the implication is that all the seemingly unrelated phenomenon happening are deliberately manifested by the latter.
- Found Footage Films: Of the mock documentary variety.
- Framing Device: The movie is presented as the recordings of the MDE investigation team that were somehow found by a journalist and, presumably, made public. This is only mentioned at the beginning however.
- From Bad to Worse: The film starts off with a child getting snatched by an unidentifiable supernatural force, and the anguish his father goes through while the investigation team tries their best to figure out what's going on. The longer they stay there the worse things get, as the presence on the ranch assaults them with increasingly aggressive phenomena and ultimately traps them there to either kill or abduct every single one of them.
- The Ghost: Jacob Rundels, the journalist credited with finding the footage that comprises the film itself. He doesn't actually appear in the film and is only mentioned in the Opening Scroll, which also reveals he mysteriously vanished the very same year the film was released.
- Government Conspiracy: There are hints at a Roswell-esque cover-up operation going on in relation to whatever is happening on the ranch, namely an unmarked vehicle that briefly appears to spy on the crew's investigation before driving off. The tape found by the crew supports this, with some sort of investigation crew having been active on the ranch in the past, and the entity present at the ranch taking them all out. Depending on how you interpret some events, there's an implication that MDE is engaging with the presence at the ranch intentionally, and sending investigation crews there deliberately to appease the entity.
- Hell Is That Noise: The first scare the crew experiences is when a piercing, incredibly loud shrieking noise wakes them all in the dead of night. The noise was so intense that it even killed a swarm of bats passing by. Even afterwards, the entity produces some unnerving sounds whenever it does something.
- Hope Spot: Britton makes it to the ATV after the entity (presumably) snatches everyone else in a mad dash to make it off the ranch, only for it to get the drop on him just as he's about to drive away.
- Humanoid Abomination: The entity's "true form" (or at least, the final form it seems to prefer taking against groups that encounter it) is an odd cross between a werewolf and The Greys from what's shown of it.
- In Name Only: While the film is definitely based off of the Skinwalker Ranch lore, skinwalkers themselves are never actually mentioned, only alluded to with some mentions of Native American tribes not going near the ranch.
- Inscrutable Aliens: The ending implies that aliens are what's behind everything going on at the ranch, and based on all of the horrors they inflict on everyone who tries to investigate them for seemingly no reason, they're definitely this trope.
- In-Universe Camera: Naturally for Found Footage, courtesy of Britton.
- It Can Think: The entity on the ranch is not only clearly cognizant, it shows signs of being borderline-omniscient when it comes to everything the crew tries to do to investigate it. While it starts off manifesting itself subtly, by the end of the film it outright destroys Hoyt's truck, their only means of reasonable transportation, to ensure they don't escape. There's also the possibility that it abducted Cody knowing that more people would be attracted to the ranch as a result, essentially luring in more victims.
- Jitter Cam: As to be expected from a Found Footage flick. Though there are also quite a few stationary shots thanks to the crew using a lot of remote cameras.
- Kick the Dog: Literally — the entity kills the Millers' farm dog via Neck Snap when it shows signs of being aware of the thing.
- Magical Native American: Ahote, whom Sam asks to bless the ranch by "communicating with the energy that speaks from the earth" and does so by performing a chant at a bonfire. After passing out during the ritual he very bluntly tells the investigation team that blessing the ranch won't help and they need to get the fuck out of there, before doing so himself.
- Mockumentary: The film is structured, for the most part, like a documentary made by the crew, complete with interviewing the crew members and an opening with testimonies from the local townsfolk. It veers more toward a conventional horror film at the end, though.
- Missing Child: Hoyt loses his child right before his very eyes and has absolutely no idea what happened to him.
- Nothing Is Scarier: A lot of the downtime in the film is spent focusing on empty shots of the various camera locations. Additionally, a lot of the handiwork of the entity on the ranch isn't explicitly shown, only its effects.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: The entity's presence sometimes makes the cameras glitch. This is most notable when it snaps the Millers' dog's neck and during Britton's last Confession Cam moment, which both supplies convenient censorship of what he is saying and is a big hint that all hell is about to break loose.
- Papa Wolf: Hoyt is obsessed over finding out what happened to his son Cody and his occasional reaction to seeing something that may have been what took him is to grab a shotgun and give chase. It works against him in the final act, when the entity manifests an illusion of Cody and Hoyt follows it, presumably being slain or taken by the entity when he disappears from the camera's view.
- Riddle for the Ages:
- What exactly happened with the previous investigation at the ranch? The way the scientists spoke to Rebecca implied that something may have happened to the ranch's previous owners, but no further details are offered.
- What is the true nature of the presence haunting the ranch, and why is it abducting people? While the ending suggests it might all be due to aliens, whether this is actually the case or the ranch truly is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink with other phenomena going on is never revealed.
- Ripped from the Headlines: A lot of the events in the film are based on the accounts of the real-life happenings at the Sherman Ranch, such as the floating orbs, giant wolves, and cattle mutilations.
- Satellite Character: Hoyt's wife only appears at the beginning and afterwards is established to have moved off the ranch to pursue psychiatric help following Cody's disappearance.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Ahote, after realizing just how screwed up things are on the Ranch, immediately leaves after telling the crew he can't help them.
- After getting sucked into the air by the entity and getting injured, Matt gets fed up with the operation and leaves the ranch.
- The Smurfette Principle: Lisa, the vet tech and only woman in the crew.
- Sole Survivor:
Assuming he actually made it off of the ranch, Matt is the only member of the investigation team who survives the film by virtue of having enough sense to leave before everything goes From Bad to Worse. - 20 Minutes into the Past: The events of the film take place in 2010, three years before its "discovery" and release.
- Uncertain Doom: With the exception of Matt who leaves early, and Ray who kills himself, the ultimate fate of everyone on the ranch is left up in the air. Most of them are presumably abducted by the entity just like Cody was, while Hoyt is last seen chasing an apparition of Cody off into the ranch and is never seen again. The ending implies everyone became a casualty of Alien Abduction.
- Wham Shot:
- Halfway through the movie, one of the remote cameras records what looks like a car driving into the ranch, visible only by its headlights in the distance. A moment after the car pauses it's revealed that it isn't a car and those aren't headlights — they're a pair of floating orbs that quickly separate and fly over the crop field before merging and vanishing.
- The final shot shows a massive alien spacecraft flying over the ranch and stopping to pick up someone, or something that's been standing there motionless for hours. While it's not clearly deducible, the figure may actually be Sam, implying he was in on it the whole time.
- Your Head A-Splode: The entity can also kill people like this, as shown when Rebecca makes one of the scientists in the tape die this way.
