Body horror can be tough to do on a television budget, especially when your show aired on the WB or the CW in the early 2000s. This was certainly the case with the early seasons of Supernatural, though the show always made due with what it had to work with. While the words “Supernatural” and “body horror” probably lead you to think of episodes like the Season 1 classic “Wendigo” (and rightly so, that monster is terrifying), a far better example from that very same season would be “Skin” — and frankly, it’s not even close. If you want some of the Winchesters’ gnarliest body horrors, then this is the episode you ought to start with.
“Skin” Is One of the Most Grotesque ‘Supernatural’ Episodes
The overall sixth episode of the series, “Skin” takes Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) to St. Louis (one of their most worked-in cities) to help a friend of Sam’s from his Stanford days — you know, back when the younger Winchester was still hopeful for his non-hunting future. Sam’s friend Zach (Alex Holtz) has been accused of murder, but he adamantly denies it. It isn’t long before the Winchesters realize that there’s something strange going on, and it quickly becomes evident that a monster may be involved. But this monster isn’t your normal demon, wendigo, werewolf, or vampire. Rather, it’s a shapeshifter that’s responsible, and boy, does the body horror element look freaky. As “Skin” continues, Sam and Dean come up against this creature, which soon begins to target the brothers personally, armed with the desire to find new life and meaning in becoming Dean.
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You’ll still get your daily serving of Jensen Ackles.
While it’s true that “Skin” is something of a psychological thriller (especially when Sam isn’t sure whether the Dean he’s with is his brother or a monster), the “body horror” element comes into play on a few memorable occasions. We see this on full display when the Winchesters stumble upon the shapeshifter’s lair. Deep underground, they find hair, teeth, skin, and other bodily features that have been shed from the creature, like the fur of an animal. The shapeshifter — a tragic monster with no identity or name beyond its classification — moves from skin-to-skin to feel normal and real as a person. “All he wants is for someone to love him,” the creature tells Sam, speaking of himself. The problem is, “Skin’s” antagonist is a straight-up psychopath who enjoys killing his victims as much as he enjoys taking the appearance and memories of those he pretends to be. Talk about a skin-crawling mind-bender.
The Shapeshifting Sequence Is Top-Tier ‘Supernatural’ Body Horror
While the wendigo monster from a few episodes prior is visually frightening, with an underrated design that will terrify any audience member, that creature is mostly out-of-sight, out-of-mind. But in “Skin,” we get to watch as the shapeshifter transforms from one person to another, and it’s as grotesque and disgusting as it is fascinating to watch. The most horrific this episode gets is when we see the creature rip off its own flesh, pulling skin follicles, tendons, and more as its bones snap and shift to better assume the form of its most recent prey. Watching (and hearing) this physical transformation is quite disturbing, and yet it’s hard to look away. It’s a miracle of modern filmmaking that the sequence can look and feel so real, and it only adds to the unsettling nature of the episode.
There are, of course, some other memorable body horror episodes. Season 4’s “Metamorphosis” quickly comes to mind because of everything Rugaru-related, as does Season 3’s “Time Is On My Side.” Yet, “Skin” remains the crown jewel of Supernatural‘s body horror catalog, if not just for that single skin-ripping sequence that sticks with you long after the episode comes to a close. It’s everything horror fans could want from a 43-minute episode of television that aims to deal with the dark concept of body snatching, all with a made-for-television-style of body bending and flesh ripping that still manages to meet the broadcast standards and practices in a pre-Walking Dead world. If only Supernatural could have taken this sequence even further…
Of course, seeing the creature become Dean, only to attack Sam, is just as psychologically engaging as his transformation was physically. Sure, it’s not as scary from a visual standpoint, but the hairs on your back will no doubt rise the moment this creature tries to replace Dean, eventually locking Sam in his underground dungeon. Like Season 1’s “Asylum” (which aired later that season), “Skin” delves into Dean’s psychology as the shapeshifter knows and feels the elder Winchester’s desires and memories as its own. While those horrors are obviously more psychological in nature, it all stems from those distinct bodily terrors that come first. We can see that the creature wants to be Dean so that he has a brother like Sam, but when he recognizes that it cannot be, he is just as easily willing to frame Dean for murder as he did Zach previously. It would be a lot more tragic if the creature wasn’t also unapologetically homicidal.
“Skin” Pushed the Winchesters Into Deadly Territory in More Ways Than One
“Skin,” which easily could have been a simple one-off episode that contributed nothing to the overall show, ends up being quite important in the long-run. It was here that Sam and Dean’s (particularly Dean’s) troubles with the law became unavoidable. Because of the shapeshifter’s serial killer spree while wearing Dean’s face and clothes, the elder Winchester became public enemy #1, and the FBI would soon be on the Winchesters’ trail. Season 2’s “Nightshifter” — another one of the show’s scariest episodes — would bring this to a head (ironically, as the brothers are working on another shapeshifter case), but it would be a recurring theme throughout the series. Additionally, “Skin” proved to Sam once-and-for-all that his life at Stanford was now behind him, and that he could never go back to the world he knew before.
Fans of “Skin” will be happy to know that the episode was the first of the anime-style remakes that made up Supernatural: The Anime Series. Retitled “The Alter Ego,” the episode condensed the original 40-minute program into a 20-minute thriller complete with a monstrous form for the shapeshifter. While the anime series isn’t nearly as horrific as the body-based thrills we get in live-action, it’s a fun adaptation that sticks to the bare bones of what made the original so good. If you’re looking for a classic Supernatural episode to terrify you a bit before bed, don’t sleep on Season 1’s “Skin.” It’ll make your flesh crawl.
