Female Film Critics 24/375
The Substance did not invent female body horror but it took it to such extravagant, delicious extremes that it has inspired a new wave of genre films in which a desire for physical perfection leads to some terrifying consequences. A new entry in this field is Thinestra, which doesn’t have the The Substance‘s budget for effects but director Nathan Hertz comes up with clever, low budget ways to sell the body horror and make people squirm.
Read more
Yay, body horror! Sasha Rainbow kicks down the door to the body horror genre with her directorial debut, Grafted, earning her spot alongside The Substance in bringing us a subgenre of woman-created body horror that is as much about being a woman as it is jarring and gross. Rainbow doesn’t have the budget or Gen-X icon, but she does pack a campy gore-a-licious story with a compelling protagonist and a strong cast to pull it off (spoiler pun mildly intended). It’s campy, it’s gross, and it’s smart, offering a bloody satire on body image, internalized racism, and acceptance.
Read more
‘Tis the season for horror movies, specifically body horror as Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley occupy the same body in The Substance. It’s been many years since Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) got her coveted Star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. She’s now an aging actress who has built an empire on her TV aerobics videos: Sparkle with Elizabeth. But then a smarmy, misogynistic executive, aptly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid), decides she’s too old, no longer attractive, and should be replaced by a perkier, prettier younger version. “After 50, it stops,” he tells her – in no uncertain terms.
Read more
More than a pandemic movie, Else is above all a body horror film. Watching people slowly and grotesquely merge with their surroundings – be it the sidewalk, a tree, or a bedsheet – is horrifying. But this change happens so gradually and mostly off-screen that the horror isn’t nearly exciting enough, especially for a Midnight Madness audience that kicked the program off with Coralie Fargeat’s excellent body horror The Substance.
Read more
Body horror extravaganza The Substance is over-the-top gross-out fun and a true homage to the masters of the genre. Writer/director Coralie Fargeat takes no prisoners. The Substance is clever, entertaining and a monstrous amount of bloody, lurid, in-your-face fun. Whether women should shoulder quite so much of the blame for how society views them based on age and beauty is the question. The answer may be somewhere in all that patriarchy-inspired jockeying for position.
Read more