For five years, Canadian filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball’s YouTube channel “Bite-Sized Nightmares” has been showcasing shorts full of fuzzy video, distorted sound, and an emphasis on creepy vibes rather than storytelling. His debut feature Skinamarink became an unlikely cult hit at Fantasia last summer, especially when a copy leaked to torrent networks. The buzz it has received may surprise many people once they actually see it, because not only is it far from a conventional horror film, it’s barely a narrative. Ball is steeped both in YouTube analog horror and avant-garde cinema.

Rather than emphasizing narrative, Skinamarink evokes the consciousness of Kevin (Lucas Paul), a terrified four-year-old boy roaming around a house in the middle of the night. He and his sister discover that their parents have disappeared, while the home’s geography has been rearranged, eliminating doors and windows. On a TV, cartoons from the 1930s play,...