The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Allegory as a means of telling queer stories isn’t a new approach and for fairly obvious reasons. Until quite recently, explicit nuanced narratives on the LGBTQIA+ experience were difficult to bring to the big screen because historically, it was straight-up banned for decades, and then that got replaced by sparse and stereotypical representation that primarily either villainized queerness or used it for comic relief. So, the go-to mechanism was to subtly include hints of queerness into narratives that other queer people or those versed in reading cinematic texts could pick up on. From Hitchcock’s Rope whose homosexual themes Leon once explored for Incluvie, to the much less subtle nod to othered queerness in the What We Do in the Shadows film I have written about earlier, it has been an accepted norm, especially for queer creatives or even creatives who are allies of the community to include themes and narrative tropes which bear similarities with the common experience of many LGBTQIA+ people. From the experience of being ostracized to the internalized self-hatred born of conditioning in a cis heterosexual world, the experience of monsters like Frankenstein’s monster bear similarities to the queer experience. In fact, the problematic villainized representation of queers often occurred in horror films in the form of antagonists who were queer-coded or explicitly queer individuals like the transvestite Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.  

But not only are some villainous representations being reclaimed, but many in the queer community also relate to the treatment of the monster even when interacting with monster stories that aren’t coded as queer. And in fact, the body horror genre holds a special place in the gender-questioning and transgender community. The experience of feeling trapped in a body that doesn’t seem to be one’s own, and the constant urge to mutilate oneself as a means of self-expression are themes commonly explored in body horror films where the body of the protagonists often even undergo physical transformation along with mutilation. Whether this was intentional or not, these narratives are being interpreted as allegories for the trans experience because non-cis individuals often find visibility in the portrayal of the characters’ relationships with their bodies which can be easily read as metaphorical if not direct, representations of body dysmorphia, a common consequence of gender dysphoria. So in the spirit of Halloween, the following is a list of body horror films that can be more easily interpreted as trans allegories. 

Yara (2021) is a nonfiction crime movie about the disappearance and murder of 13-year-old Yara Gambirasio. The film follows magistrate Letizia Ruggeri’s long search to find her killer, taking us through the procedural twists and turns of the case and ending with the capture and conviction of Massimo Bossetti.

Based on a true story, Yara (2021) has the benefit of a ready-made audience of those who followed the investigation in the press and who will want a glimpse into the specifics of how the crime was solved. But turning true events into a narrative can be challenging. There’s a desire to tell the whole story without omitting any details, and this can bog the movie down in unnecessary particulars. Unfortunately, Yara (2021) lacks focus: in its attempt to tell the whole story, it struggles to tell a consistently engaging story.

Films about solving crimes tend to fall into two camps: focusing mainly on the investigative process or focusing more on the investigators themselves. By trying to do both in a 96-minute runtime, Yara struggles to do either story justice.

An excellent film that focuses on the investigative process is ironically one that doesn’t deal with crime at all (at least in any traditional sense). 2016's Shin Godzilla shows how government officials work behind the scenes to stop a giant monster from terrorizing Japan. Government minutia is tough to make interesting, but with its quick pace and driving momentum, Shin Godzilla proves that films about the inner workings of methodical and flawed government officials can be gripping (of course, the horrific destruction wrought by a giant terrifying lizard helps too). Yara (2021) has two distinct disadvantages. One, unlike the strangely beautiful destruction of Shin Godzilla, the crime is horrible and sad. And two, while Shin Godzilla takes place over the course of weeks, the murder of Yara Gambirasio took years to investigate and prosecute, which means the movie is inevitably filled with lulls in the action and dull moments. Real life government investigations are often boring, and when a film is based on a true story, the writers can’t invent more intriguing elements or alter the timeline to make the narrative more compelling.