The Substance (2024)

Coralie Fargeat, the director of the much-acclaimed The Substance, once said in an interview that “Being a woman is body horror,” and when you think about the ways we are taught to experience our own bodies, it becomes almost impossible to argue with her. That is perhaps why, when women take control of the camera and explore the physical realities of women’s lives, horror can feel like the genre that speaks most naturally and most honestly to those experiences. From menstruation to pregnancy, childbirth to aging, we are repeatedly asked to accept pain, transformation, and bodily vulnerability as inevitable. At the same time, society demands that these same bodies remain controlled, desirable, productive, and socially acceptable.

Women filmmakers do not need to invent monsters. By turning the camera inward, directors like Fargeat, Julia Ducournau (Raw, Titane), and Hanna Bergholm reveal that the true horror can be the experience of living in a body that is constantly being judged, transformed, and claimed by others. Their films are frightening not because our bodies are grotesque or monstrous, but because we are so often denied complete autonomy.

This current year, as well as the past several, has seen a slowly building increase in something the horror genre has required for quite a while in this critic's opinion...originality. I've stated before that I am very hard to please when it comes to this vein of the film industry's offerings, always leaning more towards that which sends chills through my very being in lieu of buckets of blood and gore. With this recently released effort from director Michael Shanks....SUCCESS!!