As Northern Ireland takes its first steps towards peace in 1994, a young man prepares to leave to experience what the world has to offer in Kieron J. Walsh’s Skintown.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland create a volatile backdrop that demands both sensitivity and an awareness of the dark humour people used to navigate daily life. Derry Girls explored that combination, and Skintown works within a similar tonal space.

Set in 1994, the film follows Vinny (Jack Rowan), a resident of Enniskillen, not so affectionately known as Skintown. He is determined to leave and never look back. In his view, the most he can expect is a future of dead‑end jobs, and the worst is paralysis or death from an IRA bullet. With prospects this limited, escape becomes his only imagined path forward. He keeps a leaving‑town fund in a biscuit tin under his bed and works steadily toward the day he can use it.

Leaving isn’t as simple as saving enough for a plane ticket. Vinny is constantly pulled off course by boredom and by his persuasive best friend, Jonty (Chris Walley). He knows he will never escape if he keeps dipping into his savings for nights out, yet he continues because those nights are the only relief he has.

Vinny is an engaging protagonist. He’s likeable, amusingly nihilistic, and carries just enough hope to keep moving. Rowan balances Vinny’s dry humour with the weight of his circumstances, giving the character a lived‑in authenticity. He handles tense situations with care and experience, supported by narration that sometimes explains more than it needs to but still adds texture to the world. His relationships help round out his character, and the film gradually explores his unresolved abandonment issues relating to his father. The narration often plays over sharp background details rather than drawing attention to them, such as a group of kids hitting the deck every time a pneumatic drill starts up because it sounds like a machine gun.

The friendship between Vinny and Jonty has the easy familiarity of people who have grown up together, along with a volatility that comes from their different expectations for the future. For Vinny, Jonty embodies the routine of his home town, while Jonty has accepted that his life will remain as it is. Vinny refuses that idea and wants to see what else might be possible beyond Skintown.

Authenticity is one of the film’s clearest strengths. It captures a period that is difficult to fully understand without having lived through it, and Ciarán McMenamin’s adaptation of his own novel brings a sense of first‑hand experience. The film outlines the tensions between the various factions, along with the terminology and survival habits people learned out of necessity. It also presents a close‑knit community where people protect one another and share stories of near misses. Life is grim, but they make what they can of it.

Vinny is pulled into a dangerous situation when he is tasked with dealing drugs under the noses of the people they were stolen from. He and Jonty try to spread the word discreetly at a nightclub, but their attempt quickly collapses and leaves them in serious trouble. The job reflects the constant threats surrounding them. They take it only because refusing would provoke a violent response, leaving them with no real choices and forcing them to navigate each complication as it arises.

The club night and afterparty form the film’s centrepiece, presenting a brief glimpse of what a better future might look like. People from all sides of the conflict come together to dance, take drugs, and celebrate the recently announced ceasefire. The moment suggests that the younger generation wants to shape their own future rather than inherit the divisions of the past. There is also a clear sense that this bubble of camaraderie is temporary and that the usual tensions will return once the night ends.

This theme is pushed further as Vinny, Jonty, Eileen (Jamie‑Lee O’Donnell) and the jaded soldier Wilson (Hope Ipoku Jr) distribute the drugs and revel in a night free from the prejudice and fear that usually shape their lives. The sequence is presented as an oasis, a brief look at what life could be if people set their differences aside. It avoids tipping into sentimentality because the film has already established its world with enough clarity to support the moment.

Skintown maintains a clear, confident balance throughout. Its wry humour captures the absurdity of the period without diluting its seriousness. The characters are sharply defined, and the coming‑of‑age elements sit within a screenplay that handles them with precision. The film moves decisively between comedy, tragedy and the constant threat of violence, never losing its hold.

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Verdict

A sharply observed, confidently balanced drama that navigates humour and danger with clarity and delivers its story with precision.

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