body-horror

As previously mentioned I avoid horror where people do terrible things to each other, because that could happen, and probably does, and I don’t care for jump scares in my old age. This gets through on my sci-fi horror technicality: none of this could happen—I hope at least—so I was free to enjoy the shapeshifting gore from a more… scientific point of view. That thing has organs.

Because the effects are physically there, they hold up better than most CGI (the defibrillator scene especially). Only the odd jerky transition gives their age away. The Morricone score has dated worse than the rubber: that early-80s synth tone sounds way older than it should. The ending hangs brilliantly.

I don’t entirely know what I just watched. Perhaps that’s the point. It opens like a coming-of-age film about two kids bonding over a Buffy-esque TV show, then becomes something stranger. The Lynch comparisons are valid. Schoenbrun shoots suburbia soft and pink, and the Alex G score sits underneath everything like static you can’t quite tune out. The broader soundtrack, Caroline Polachek and yeule especially, is great. What stays with me is how patient the film is about not naming what it’s actually about. For anyone working through questions of identity and dysphoria, I suspect this will matter for a long time.