Horror can come in so many forms that a terrifying story cannot bear any resemblance to the entries next to it, despite comfortably covering the same genre. Some sub-genres focus on masked serial killers, others take on bigger political themes, but only one chooses to focus on the awful truth of what’s inside.
Horror movie fans will hear about many different subgenres, some more productive than others. The boundaries are almost always a little blurry when dividing a genre into even finer groups and there’s always a fair amount of crossover, but most know body horror when they see it.
Body horror is the subgenre of horror that deals with the disturbing violation of the basic structure of the human form. Sure, most horror media features unspeakable things done to flesh and bones, but body horror places special emphasis on the process and the unique meaning behind its effects. Renowned film scholar Linda Williams defines it alongside melodrama and pornography as “genres of excess,” which exist to evoke extreme emotions. These works attempt to poke and excite specific neuroses, triggering physiological responses. Body horror typically pushes the physical form of his subjects to the limit and beyond. While the visuals may feel like an empty spectacle to the uninitiated, body horror is a subgenre prone to social commentary. At least in the prime examples, the visceral disgust of this unique subgenre is rarely without purpose.
The key to distinguishing one subgenre of horror from another is determining what the scary part of it is. The villain of a slasher movie can chop his victim to death with a kitchen knife. The horror from a monster movie could eat its prey like a wild animal. The esoteric elder in a cosmic horror story could spoil the minds of anyone who perceives it, driving them insane. Body horror is about the human body being transformed beyond its natural limits. This is rarely the result of direct violence, not injury or bloodshed. Instead, body horror is about disease, mutilation, invasion and corruption from within. Parasites that distort their hosts, tumors that rot their suffering victim from within, or innocent people that have been turned into something completely different by unethical tampering. The genre has a long and rich history with several interesting and strange entries.
The first example of body horror was undoubtedly that of Mary Shelly Frankenstein, in which a school dropout violated the tranquility of the human body to create a living creature from exhumed corpses. The work that underpinned science fiction also served as an introduction to many of the themes of the body horror subgenre. The next century gave the world the groundbreaking work of Franz Kafka from 1915 The Metamorphosis. The story of the mild-mannered salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning and is inexplicably transformed into a huge insect skips the most common aspect of physical horror to go straight to the heart of the matter. Most modern incarnations would give the audience a long, visceral depiction of Samsa’s body changing, but Kafka immediately intervenes in the social implications of his new form. Body horror may have its origins in literature, but it is much better suited to a visual medium.
The term body horror was coined in 1983 by Australian writer Phillip Brophy to describe a then burgeoning movement in cinema. It was codified then and now by the works of one David Cronenberg. Those looking for a quick crash course in body horror can probably pick up one of his movies at random and come away with a solid understanding of the sub-genre. Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Crash, eXistenZ, Crimes of the Future, associated with so many of the most iconic and respected works in the subgenre. His name is interchangeable with the concept. The term “Cronenbergian” follows body horror more often than not. He didn’t invent the concept, but he codified it, and he’s still working on it. His influence can be felt on modern filmmakers such as Julia Ducournau in her films Raw and Titane and the outstanding 2020 feature of his own son Brandon Owner.
Body horror is often full of subtext that is just as hard to ignore as the images. Common themes are the fear of intimacy, the limits of humanity, the importance of perception, the effects of media and the difficulties of identity. Technically, any werewolf or zombie horror story is a piece of body horror, but the focus really is what makes the difference. Body horror demands its audience to ask what we are when we are forced to change. What can we become if we are allowed to grow undisputedly? What could go wrong if we decide to play god? It is The Ship of Theseus applied to the human form. How does the body affect the soul? How much of it can be made unrecognizable before we cease to be human and become something else? There is only one subgenre of horror that answers these questions and at the same time disgusts the public.
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