The Internet is Dying to Know: What is Body Horror? Watch this Messed Up Movie on Hulu to Find Out
Have you seen The Substance yet? If you haven’t, you need to stop reading, go to your local theater, watch The Substance, maybe watch The Substance again, and then come back here. Ingest it. Feel it. Live it. Coralie Fargeat’s (Revenge) sophomore feature is a sensational odyssey into the bleakest, funniest, most scathing kind of body horror. The winner of Best Screenplay at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is also distributor Mubi’s most successful theatrical release to date. The Substance isn’t just a critical and financial success, however. According to Google Trends, the movie’s release has led to a considerable spike in searches around body horror. What is body horror? Where to watch body horror? The whole gamut. Luckily, one of the best—and a clear inspiration on The Substance—is currently streaming on Hulu for easy access.
Per Hulu: In a remake of the 1958 cult classic, a young scientist transforms himself into a fly in an experiment gone horribly wrong.
David Cronenberg’s The Fly is one of the greatest horror movies ever made. Not only that, the film is arguably the template for modern body horror. Even almost 40 years out, the impact of Cronenberg’s masterpiece continues to be felt. Even The Substance pays considerable visual homage to The Fly in its final 20 minutes. The Fly is tragic, terrifying, romantic, and super, super gross. It is, without a doubt, the apex of contemporary body horror? What is body horror, audiences ask? Well, it’s The Fly.
In an interview with Indiewire, Coralie Fargeat cited The Fly as one of several movies that took her “outside of the real world, of realism, of everyday life, which I was struggling with. The exciting life was happening in movies.” It was movies like Cronenberg’s that ultimately inspired her to pursue filmmaking. How remarkable, then, that The Substance is one of the greatest body horror movies since The Fly in 1986.
While most horror fans have undoubtedly seen The Fly, this October is the perfect time to acclimate unfamiliar friends and family members, especially those already aboard The Substance train. Give them a little more body horror to spice up the month. The Substance is something of a phenomenon, and one of the greatest pleasures as a genre fan is seeing something break out like this, ultimately inspiring fans to seek out older works.
What do you think? Did The Substance remind you a lot of The Fly? How does it fit within the broader canon of what body horror is? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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