In the 1980s, film scholar Barbara Creed coined the term “monstrous-feminine,” referring to the way in which female monsters are typically portrayed as threatening and repulsive for reasons related to their bodies and sexuality. The new film The Substance takes its cue from Creed, proposing a feminist critique of the female experience through the haunting language of body horror, a subgenre concerned with the transformation, destruction, or grotesque exaggeration of the human body.

The Substance is a film about a Hollywood star who becomes increasingly weaker as she ages and does everything she can to stay beautiful. After her aerobics show on television is canceled, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) resorts to a mysterious serum that can create a “better” version of herself – a younger double that she can grow into for a few days at a time.

As success and the return of public recognition lure Sparkle away from her older, now abandoned self, terrible changes occur. It seems poignant that the protagonist of this dark parable is played by Moore, an actor whose looks have long been under scrutiny.

In the October issue of Sight and Sound, the film’s director, Coralie Fargeat, explains that the film is not intended to be a caricature, but rather “a reflection of society’s misogynistic mentality.” It is “really so disgusting in the real world… so brutal,” she argues.

Many agree. In a review for Film International, film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas even goes so far as to call The Substance a “documentary” because of its “emotional fidelity” – that is, its ability to literally depict the disconnect between body and consciousness caused by aging, which has a particularly negative impact on women.

A growing number of films

The Substance isn’t the only major film in 2024 to be marketed in whole or in part as “body horror.” That’s surprising, because body horror originally emerged as a niche subgenre, often produced independently.

Body horror’s gruesome aesthetic and themes of bodily decay, transformation, and mutilation can be off-putting to many viewers. Yet films like Love Lies Bleeding, Tiger Stripes, and I Saw the TV Glow (all due out in 2024) have turned to the subgenre. Their directors were drawn to the film’s ability to tell timely stories about how physicality, identity, and social interactions cannot be separated.

These films mostly focus on marginalized or nonconformist people, and show how our personal actions and sense of identity are always influenced by the availability of role models and the limitations imposed on us by governmental, educational, religious and familial constraints. For example, the teenage protagonist in Tiger Stripes rebels against the expectations that as a girl she should cover her hair, show modesty and be polite.

From “Poor Things” and “Infinity Pool” (both 2023) to “Hatching” (2022) and “Titane” (2021), the 2020s are shaping up to be a new golden age of body horror.

Novelist AK Blakemore has written about the rise of “femcore”—a literary trend of “ultraviolent body horror.” This label includes Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020), Alison Rumfitt’s Brainwyrms (2023), Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part (2024), and the anthology Of the Flesh (2024).

And a similar trend is emerging in streaming shows, from the episode “The Outside” from Guillermo del Toro’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” (2022) to Alice Birch’s remake of David Cronenberg’s “The Lovebirds” (2023).

A subgenre with substance

One of the key features of this current wave of body horror is the influx of directors who identify as women and as queer.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, when body horror rose to popularity thanks to films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Fly (1986), and Hellraiser (1987), there were far fewer female and queer directors than there are today. This decade saw major strides toward inclusion, and the film industry was heavily influenced by social movements like Me Too, Trans Lives Matter, and Black Lives Matter, although there is still a lot of work to be done.

Body horror is particularly interesting for filmmakers who would previously have struggled to make a living in the world of commercial filmmaking. Filmmakers (including Rose Glass, Amanda Nell Eu, Jane Schoenbrun, Hanna Bergholm, Julia Ducournau, Michelle Garza Cervera, Natalie Erika James, Alice Maio Mackay, Nia DaCosta, and Coralie Fargeat) have found in this subgenre a valuable vocabulary for feminist, trans activist, and anti-racist messages. Many of them speak of their work as deeply personal—if not based on their direct experience.

The subgenre of body horror is attuned to the violence of social exclusion and discrimination. Its metamorphic, painful, insidious and carnal nightmares help express the concerns of a new generation of artists for whom physicality and sometimes just visibility have become a political statement.

David Cronenberg ended his classic body horror film Videodrome (1983) with the symbolic sentence: “Long live the new flesh!” He needn’t have worried. It’s here to stay.

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