It’s safe to say that body horror is having a moment between recent releases The Substance, Grafted, and The Ugly Stepsister. It’s a welcome trend; body horror has a way of getting under our skin like no other, figuratively and otherwise. There’s no end to the creative ways body horror violates, mutilates, and mutates basic […]
It’s safe to say that body horror is having a moment between recent releases The Substance, Grafted, and The Ugly Stepsister. It’s a welcome trend; body horror has a way of getting under our skin like no other, figuratively and otherwise. There’s no end to the creative ways body horror violates, mutilates, and mutates basic biology, finding endless ways to test the gag reflex in the process. Body horror has also long provided fertile ground for groundbreaking filmmakers to explore the psychologically and physically disturbing ways human anatomy can be abused.
There’s a wide world of body horror beyond Society, The Thing, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Raw, Titane, or even David Cronenberg‘s horror output. For those looking to venture deeper into the stomach-churning abyss, here are 10 body horror movies you maybe haven’t seen from gateway horror to gross-out gorefests.
Attack of the Mushroom People
This early body horror movie and precursor to The Last of Us works as an easy gateway into the subgenre or for squeamish types. Released initially as Matango, this Japanese horror movie sees a group of passengers and crew aboard a yacht on a day trip capsized by unpredictable weather. They wind up on a deserted island that’s scarce in food resources, save for mysterious mushrooms and a shipwreck onshore containing remnants of radioactive testing. They don’t realize until it’s too late that the mushrooms transform them into fungal humanoid creatures. Directed by Ishirō Honda, the mind behind prominent kaiju films Godzilla, Rodan, Destroy All Monsters, and more, Attack of the Mushroom People offers something far more atmospheric and eerie.
Antiviral
Possessor and Infinity Pool filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg’s feature debut follows Caleb Landry Jones as Syd, an employee at a company that acquires diseases and pathogens from celebrities and then, for a pretty penny, injects them into fans who long to connect with their coveted idols. Syd injects himself with an unknown pathogen from celebrity Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) to incubate and sell on the black market but finds himself drawn into a deadly mystery instead. Surreal, twisted, and grisly, Antiviral explores the lust for fame with bloodshed. But don’t expect this body horror entry to get nearly as graphic or stomach-churning as its counterparts.
Bite
Love triangles are tired, but love triangles with gross-out body horror are a different story. Before her wedding, Casey (Elma Begovic) enjoys a bachelorette trip with her best friends in Costa Rica. Worried about her pending nuptials, she ignores a strange bug bite. Once home, however, that bug bite causes bizarre body changes. As she transforms into an insect-like creature with murderous impulses, it coincides with reveals about her friendships and fiancé that lead to a gruesome implosion of Casey’s life as she once knew it. The love triangle is never as interesting as Casey’s gag-inducing transformation, which is worth the price of admission thanks to an emphasis on goopy practical effects.
Blue My Mind
In the vein of Ginger Snaps, Blue My Mind brings gruesome body horror to the female coming-of-age and puberty story. Of course, what fifteen-year-old Mia (Luna Wedler) is becoming isn’t a werewolf, but something entirely different. That she’s undergoing such a strange change amidst average teenage growth makes for an extra angsty time. It’s a drama first and foremost, but that doesn’t mean Mia’s transition into adulthood doesn’t come with a few skin-crawling body horror moments. Blue My Mind isn’t just Lisa Brühlmann’s first feature, it’s her film school thesis film, too.
Curse II: The Bite
The time-honored tradition of Italian-made horror movies getting retitled to fit within existing franchises continued with this unrelated follow-up to 1987’s The Curse, loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” Curse II bears only its title in common with its predecessor and follows a young couple, Clark (J. Eddie Peck) and Lisa (Jill Schoelen, The Stepfather), traveling through the desert, unwittingly passing through an abandoned nuclear test site that’s become a breeding ground to venomous snakes. The couple find themselves in a grotesque nightmare when Clark gets bitten. Curse II is distinctly ’80s, and its plot brings the cheese, but it’s offset by Schoelen’s natural charm and SFX legend Screaming Mad George’s (Society) goopy, slimy practical effects.
Exte: Hair Extenstions
Beware to those whose skin starts crawling at the site of hair clumps; this Japanese horror-comedy revolves around killer hair extensions. A fetishist working as a morgue’s night watchman becomes obsessed with a corpse’s luxurious hair and decides to sell it to various hairdressers. The hair inflicts visions of death before killing them, and it’s up to an aspiring hairstylist to solve the curious case. Hair gets everywhere and invades everything, leading to some rather gruesome demises.
In My Skin
Marina de Van wrote, directed, and starred in this gruesome French extremity horror film that sees a woman becoming obsessed with her own body after an accident. As in, the woman develops a compulsive need to feed on her own flesh. Naturally, her life spirals, and things get pretty gruesome. A thought-provoking story that unfurls with unhurried pacing, de Van doesn’t shy away from the grisly exploration of self-mutilation.
Infection
An understaffed and underfunded hospital sets the stage for a catastrophic mistake that unleashes a virus that renders the infected into a liquid pile of green goo. Director Masayuki Ochiai (Parasite Eve, 2008’s Shutter) combines a variety of subgenres in this eerie psychological body horror movie that emphasizes the potential horrors lurking in hospitals. Released as part of the “J-Horror Theater” theatrical film series, Infection (Kansen) dwells on dread and paranoia over graphic body melts, framing some of the worst deaths off-screen. It’s surrealistic body horror with way more on its mind than the contagion causing green goo to ooze from every orifice.
Thanatomorphose
Consider this expert-level body horror for only the steeliest of stomachs. Its title sums up the entire plot, or what semblance of one exists, in which a young woman finds herself rotting alive from a mysterious ailment not long after an evening of rough sex. Expect a methodical and excruciatingly intimate journey with slow decay. Writer/Director Éric Falardeau’s feature debut doesn’t offer much in the way of story, action, or form. It makes up for that in revolting and effective practical effects that sell just how gnarly, horrifying, and depressing it’d be to slowly rot away. This arthouse-meets-splatter film isn’t an easy watch or recommended for any but the most extreme horror lovers, but it’s bound to leave jaws on the floor in more ways than one.
Xtro
There’s nothing else quite like this insane alien abduction freakout movie that features no shortage of WTF-style horror, especially when it comes to the human body. Despite a rather simple setup, in which dad Sam Phillips (Philip Sayer) is abducted by aliens right in front of his son’s eyes only to return altered three years later, it quickly becomes something far more complicated and gory. From the goriest of kills and the squeamish, cringe-inducing ways in which these extraterrestrials seek reproduction, and even the various creature effects for each different iteration of the alien beings, Xtro is impressively revolting. There are gnarly impregnations and subsequent birthing of a fully-grown man, human juice-boxing and bizarre egg-laying in the bathtub. It’s as outrageous as it sounds.
