Watson's A-Z of Horror: B is for Body Horror

Take a step inside the grotesque side of horror

For those on the outside looking in, there is likely a feeling that all horror fans are desensitized and free from fright. For some, this is the case, but if you were to poll horror fans as a whole, you would probably find that there is something in particular the freaks them out. You might also discover that body horror is on the list for many of those horror fans, as I certainly know that it is for me. I’ll get into why it bothers me toward the end of this piece, but let’s take a closer look at body horror and why it is so effective.

All Pain and No Gain

To a certain extent, we are in full control of our body. If you gain a little weight, you know exactly what you need to do to get back into beach body shape. What if the transformation is something outside of your control. What if a virus, or even an animal bite, sets forth a chain of events that makes it so that you lose that feeling of control. It is no longer your body your choice. Instead, you are at the whim of whatever invading parasite sees fit. In short, you become the host to an unwanted guest.

Body horror in the movies is rarely shown as a subtle shift toward something awful. Instead, it is a painful transformation into something grotesque, something wholly unrecognizable from the human form. Besides the pain, there is also the loss of self, of your identity.

At its roots, body horror taps into our biggest fears, which are illness, injury, or a loss of control of basic human functions. Some wounds heal in time, but in body horror transformations, it is often a permanent state of being, which is an absolutely horrible thought. Think of Seth Brundle in The Fly and how his whole character changes as he becomes closer to insect than man. It is an unraveling that is more than a little uncomfortable to watch.

Good body horror isn’t simply about grossing the audience out. No, it is about playing into the fears that we all have, with aging another one that haunts us all. I think that is why The Substance connected with so many people. In an age of GLP-1 shots and weird diet fads, the idea of a quick fix seems great, at least until the side effects kick in.

My Personal Connection to Body Horror

I have dabbled, albeit mildly, in body horror in a couple of my books. In both, it is cancer that served as the basis for writing those stories. I lost my mum to cancer and very nearly lost my brother-in-law, too. When he was at the height of his illness, I wrote a novella called Rotten, which was as close as I came to outright body horror. In the book, it was a flesh-eating disease caused by deadly bacteria in the water that led to the downfall of the main character, but in my head, it was cancer that was the villain.

Overall, I am not a huge fan of this particular sub-genre, but there are a couple of exceptions. The Thing and The Fly are the standouts for me, while The Queen by Nick Cutter is a book I would recommend for those of you who love this type of horror.

I’d love to know how you guys feel about body horror and what it means to you. I also hope you will join me again for the next round of my A-Z series, which will be C is for Cursed Objects