Flesh For Fantasy: The Rise of Body Horror in Film
Ariel Rivera
There's a certain catharsis to exiting the monotony of your body and becoming something else. We feel this all the time. It’s the sudden brassy attitude when you put on a wig for the first time. It’s the sold out shower concert you give to your loofa every night. It’s the first piercing you get as a teenager. Perhaps that's why body horror has seen a resurgence in recent years.With The Substance going viral online, body horror and its place in film has been making its semi-regular rounds in the online discourse cycle. Is the gore just for shock value? Is showing excessive violence against women under the guise of metaphor valid or exploitative? Is body horror just more Hollywood schlock?
Margaret Qualley as Sue in The Substance, Image Credit: Mubi
Directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance follows Elizabeth Sparkle, a once-revered actress, now-faded into obscurity as a TV fitness host, who’s show is starting to decline in ratings. The studio execs blame her age, causing a spiral in Elizabeth that leads her to inject herself with the titular substance, which promises a better and younger version of herself.
What follows can only be described as squelchy. The new Elizabeth, now renamed Sue, slowly births out of older Elizabeth’s spine, ripping her completely open from her neck to her tailbone. As per the rules of The Substance, Sue and Elizabeth must keep a balance between their shared bodies and are each given 7 days to live freely as the other. To remain fruitful they must feed off the body of the other throughout these days. Sue, now adored by the public as the new host of Elizabeth’s prior show, does not respect this balance and more bodily chaos ensues, resulting in a blood splattered, carnage-filled ending with broken bones, pulled flesh, and twisted limbs everywhere. It’s a body horror lover’s wet dream.
Sue and Elizabeth separated for the first time, Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes
The Substance is a satirical take on society’s treatment of older women and the beauty standards placed upon them. It’s gaudy, it’s in your face, every room is caked in neon, the score is thumping EDM music, and as a result the special effects are exaggerated to the max. Fargeat wanted you to feel every wound to your core, she wanted you to peek behind your covered eyes and come face-to-face with the viscera of what women are faced with - albeit in a fleshy metaphorical sense. The Substance’s popularity has come from word of mouth mainly, and to put it plainly what separates this film from other body horror classics is that this movie doesn’t feel like it hates women.
A while back an iceberg tier list of horror movies was going viral on TikTok, and an alarming amount of these films revolve around and depict violence against women - be it sexual, physical, mental, you name it, these had it - and this list tarnishes the name of what body horror can achieve. The genre isn’t just a gorefest for the fun of it, in the hands of a competent director it can explore aspects of the human condition in new, creative, and guttural ways.
Coralie Fargeat winning Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival, Image Credit: Getty Images
Interestingly, the recent rise in body horror films has been dominated by female directors such as Forgeat. Julia Ducournau, Hanna Bergholm, Jane Schoebrun, have each used the genre to explore themes of identity, birth, transformation. Ducournau even won the Palme D’or for her 2021 film Titane. These women express complex ideas through visceral, gory imagery, and it’s no surprise the genre is on the rise as the overall attitude over a woman’s autonomy over her body is constantly debated about. Just this year alone there have been at least 4 major horror movies - Immaculate, The First Omen, Alien: Romulus, and The Substance - where the birthing of something unwanted is a focal point of the movie. Horror films, and particularly body horror films, show us the horrifying future we may be nearing.
Some critics have said that instead of satirizing Sue and Elizabeth’s struggles with perfection, it actually makes them the laughing stock of the film. Yet that in itself is the essence of satirization.
There’s a point in the movie where Elizabeth, jealous of Sue’s sexual escapades, decides to go on a date herself. What follows is a lengthy scene where Elizabeth reaches her breaking point with her appearance, and rubs her face raw, practically attempting to rip it off completely to get a new one. It is a scene where all the extremities of the movie disappear, and we are left with the white stark emptiness that a bathroom mirror can hold. Is there anything more horrifying than your own reflection when you're at your lowest?
Elizabeth preparing for her date, Image Credit: Mubi
There’s a primitiveness to the genre. Seeing our innards splattered in ways we’ve never even fathomed before strikes us deep in our gut. In the wake of Ozempic and buccal fat removals and trips to Turkey for hair transplants, it’s also a timely film on the lengths we’ll go to for perfection.
With The Substance, Forgeat created a new femcel classic. It’s a movie that promotes discourse, and isn’t afraid to get downright nasty. I squirmed through the whole movie, and yet I know deep down I still would consider taking the substance if it meant achieving society’s version of “perfection.” And according to countless Letterboxd reviews, I’m not the only one.
What does this say about us? Even when confronted with blood, guts, and carnage, we’re still willing to risk it all for the perfect body. Once we achieved it would we even be satisfied, or would we still desire more like Elizabeth and Sue did? The Substance is extreme, but is it any different to what we are already doing to ourselves? I don’t have the answers, but as Elizabeth Sparkle always says - “Take care of yourself.”
Strike out,
Ariel Rivera
Editor: Carla Mendez
Ariel Rivera is a junior at Florida International University, majoring in Media Communications with a minor in English Studies. As a writer, Rivera is passionate about expanding on pop culture topics that may seem frivolous at first glance, but which, through his unique point of view, become pillars of discussion. A self-described crazy film nerd, Rivera enjoys watching and reviewing movies in his free time, as well as reading and lounging with his dog, Neo.
