An Ode To Flesh: My Love of Body Horror
A man begins slowly turning into metal, with tubes and steel spikes bursting from his skin. An alien species replicates all organic life, creating perfect copies. After her ear falls off, a clueless, infected woman eats it with custard.
What do all of these have in common? Body horror. The destruction, evolution, or invasion of our very flesh itself. Something has always drawn me to the subgenre, and while I couldn’t tell you how it began, it is my passion. The goopier, the grosser, the better. In films, books, and art creators have been moulding the human form in some really outstanding ways.
It’s both the most relatable and outlandish subgenre: we all have bodies and experience the world through them, but you’re unlikely to find yourself the host of a Xenomorph. You can understand how horrible that process would be⸺and I think that’s part of it. There’s a fundamental understanding of “wrongness” and a fascination with the results.
Clearly, I’m not the only one with this obsession because creators have been using bodies as part of horror since, well, the beginning of time. Many myths and legends have elements of the genre, whether you’ve thought about it or not. Minos, the half man half bull. Yokai, like the Rokurokubi appear as women with extraordinarily long necks. It’s a part of our nature to go “damn, would that be messed up or what if there was a guy with no face?!”
With the advent of digital art and photo manipulation, the creation of cryptids and other strange beings has exploded online. From Trevor Henderson’s infamous Sirenhead to various SCPs, body horror is everywhere. It feels like a really amazing time to be a fan!
So for a few minutes, I want to praise a few of my favourite body horror moments and share what I love so much about them.
Annihilation - The Bear
Director Alex Garland has said that his film adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s book is more “a dream of the book” than a faithful adaptation, which I really love as an approach. A group of five women enter an area known as “The Shimmer”, which seems to refract and reform both animal and plant cells together. After a team member was mauled to death the previous night, tensions rise and then it arrives: the bear.
A horrifying, mutated creature with the body of a large bear, the flesh and fur from the skull missing. The bones are dirty and decaying, with a human skull appearing to grow out of the side. When the bear roars, the cries of their fallen ally screaming “help me” are distorted and combined with the moans of the beast. It’s an absolutely terrifying sight to behold and a marvel of practical effects, stunt performance and CGI. I was lucky enough to see Annihilation for the very brief period it was in theatres, and the bear got a pretty amazing “wtf” reaction.
Society - The Shunting
The king of melt movies, Society sets up the mysterious Shunting in the opening credits. A sweaty, waxy array of limbs appear in the background out of focus. It’s a perfect way to introduce the concept of wrongness I mentioned earlier while also still leaving you in the dark.
After feeling like he’s losing his mind throughout the entire film, Billy finally witnesses the ultimate horror: his family, and all the upper-class residents of his town, are secretly an alien species that melt and combine, both to feed on the poor and as a pleasurable activity, moaning in ecstasy and laughing as they tear apart a man. It’s the culmination of excess!
He Took Off His Skin For Me
This short film is very literal: to prove his love, a man removes his skin. Besides that wild premise, I really enjoy how it deals with the mundanity of this situation. Constantly scrubbing the floors, washing and rewashing bedding and clothes, even how cold he’d get so the heating bill becomes wildly expensive. It uses a grotesque concept to explore the struggles of a relationship in a really satisfying way.
Which honestly, is one strengths of horror: using it to open discussions of deeper issues in a safe and interesting way. Overcoming hardship is basically what every slasher is about, right? For body horror, it’s often confronting the inevitability of death or the limitations of our physical selves. The human body is both one of the most incredible and complicated systems and extremely fragile. I accidentally sliced off half my thumbnail once, and it pained me for weeks⸺the nail still grows in split, exactly where the cut happened.
Parasyte
A series of manga, anime, and several live action films that follow Shinichi and his new partner “Migi”, an alien life form that has taken over his hand. While the rest of the world is progressively taken over by these lifeforms, Shinichi learns to co-habitate his body and use Migi’s skills to his advantage to fight back. It blends all of my favourite tropes: over-the-top gore, black humor and downright silly moments to break up the action.
It also shows another type of horror I mentioned: instead of destruction or change, it’s an evolution, a mutually beneficial relationship between man and alien. Shinichi’s struggle with his humanity is a major plot element as he loses friends and family. It also goes in the opposite direction, with Reiko, a parasite, learning to love and care for a baby. It’s been one of my favourites since I read it as a teenager, and had a major influence on my style of writing.
I’ve never been able to fully articulate why this type of horror draws me in so well, but I suppose it’s not just one thing, just as body horror itself has many variations and definitions. Regardless, I’m so happy to have found a community who loves it just as much as I do. Long live the new flesh!
