In the right macabre hands, body horror is a crucial tool in the storytellers arsenal for leaving truly lasting impressions on an audience.
It’s Halloween! That magical season birthed in a stew of ancient pagan and synchronized early Christian festivals that really came unto its own once the broiling American melting pot got a hold of it. Endless debates will rage about its true origin, but everyone can concede that it’s meant to celebrate the coming of harvest, to venerate the dead we’ve lost, and to maybe scare away some evil spirits just for good measure. Most folks will dress up, party, and hand out candy, but in those odd years when All Hallow’s Eve falls on a school night, most of us will be happy to celebrate at home in our PJs with a good scary movie (or TV show /“limited series”/Webisode/Twitch feed…whatever the kids are doing these days).
The question that many of us get when our friends and loved ones come to us seeking a recommendation for a celebratory spook is “I like scary things…but is it GORY!?!” which is usually followed by “I just can’t handle the blood and guts.” This is a fair observation given the odd, imperiled nature of the world at the moment, but I feel like it’s often used to relegate body horror to the realms of cheap thrills and D- movie schlockfests. In the right macabre hands, body horror is a crucial tool in the storytellers arsenal for leaving truly lasting impressions on an audience. I see body horror functioning in two distinct ways: Destruction of the Body and Corruption of the Body. Let’s dissect them, shall we?
SPOILER WARNING: This article is literally about the gory details, so be warned…minor spoilers ahead for as wide variety of films from the last 50 years or so.
Continue reading “THIS IS NOT MY FACE” – The Importance of Body Horror to Modern Storytelling
Member of the Director’s Guild of America. Seeker of Eldritch Truth. Roller of Dice. Collector of Weird Taxidermy.
