From Jack Torrance wiggling his head through a doorframe, to Janet Leigh having a bubble bath, to Daniel Kaluuya crying in his Lazy Boy… most of the iconic shots from cinema history can be attributed to the horror genre. This is because, unlike the Western and the comic book genre, there’s so many vastly different ways to scare an audience. Whether that be a cheese grater to the knee, an alien with jagged teeth or, in my sister’s case, the Minions, don’t ask. There will always be fear…
Well, maybe not always. Body horror was the original king of the multiplexes. The sub-genre of horror exploded onto the screen with Quatermass Xperiment in 1955 and then went on one NBA All-Star winning streak of hitting it out of the park. From Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956, to The Fly and The Blob in 1958, and then a whole host of other classics featuring the ooey gooey stuff of nightmares. The reason it landed with such celebratory fanfare can be attributed to one factor: under-exposure. In the 1950s, audiences had been programmed in the cinema to see ruby-slipper-clacking songstresses and pie-baking apple-poison victims. So, when these four heavy hitters showed up with melting skin, elongating body parts and, frankly, the unimaginable… it was horrifying.
Yet, that’s precisely why its proverbial reign of terror was so short-lived.
In a world where we can have photo-realistic beasts dancing with girls in ball gowns, 11-foot green monsters that love to smash, and blue shapeshifting aliens that love to surf… the novelty of a melting face has, well, melted. We no longer find a monster horrifying because we know there’s some man in a blue Lycra suit and dots on his face just waiting to bite someone before he can go off and get his morning croissant. The nuts and bolts of the body horror and the creature feature are too exposed now, and with that exposure makes the unimaginable, well… very easily imagined.
To combat this general acclimation to the use of practical effects and boogeymen, Hollywood realized all that was no match for the internal struggles and conflicts bothering the Gen Z audience. Witches and goblins, vampires and ghouls aren’t as terrifying as the slow unravelling of one’s psyche, or a controlling boyfriend who is slowly stripping you of your autonomy. Unfortunately, the Minions are still terrifying to my sister though, no matter the circumstances.
But whether it be Black Swan, Get Out, Hereditary… and most recently, Obsession, the pivot towards internalized, elevated horror has been a key nuclear bomb to the slasher, body-horror and creature-feature sub-genres of horror. Obsession was such a mega-hit, in fact, making a (no pun intended) monster-sized $516 million on an under $1 million dollar budget, that it outgrossed recent movies from long-running fan-favorite Hollywood classics like Insidious, Evil Dead and The Conjuring. It’s quite clear audiences prefer this introspective, elevated horror and are leaving the sub-genres of horror in the CVS discount bin along with the Westerns.
Yet in 2024, Coralie Fargeat dusted aside those Stetsons and fished the body-horror genre out of the dustbin to merge the dying body-horror genre with the new Gen Z introspective horror inclinations to create a new boon for the industry: The Substance.
Contemporary culture is now flooded with cosmetic procedures, weight-loss drugs, injectables, and a constant reminder that a better you is only a needle and a couple hundred bucks away. There is never a message being presented in the media that who you are is adequate, but there’s plenty out there giving you options on how to alter yourself to the extent that you could be. Fargeat’s challenging of that rhetoric and her tackling of such a topical issue like self-hatred and the conformation to beauty standards through the body-horror genre was a brave choice that ultimately reaped the rewards for such boldness. The Oscar gold and the positive reception for the film show that Elizabeth Sparkle’s self-loathing nature is not contained to the four walls of her white-tiled bathroom but rather a larger cultural issue that needed to be addressed.
The ingeniousness of what Fargeat was able to accomplish has now become, in itself, its own genre from which many of the recent horror movies have found their inspiration and put their own twist on, such as:
Slanted, Amy Wang’s 2026 body-horror satire, as Rotten Tomatoes put it, “As a senior in high school, Joan Huang idolizes winning Prom Queen as the embodiment of popularity, beauty and the ultimate form of acceptance into American life. In her relentless pursuit for the crown, she undergoes an experimental racial transformation to become White and win Prom Queen.” The film uses The Substance framework to examine how assimilation to white culture can result in the monstrous deformity of oneself.
Then there is Species, another body-horror film from French director Marrion Le Coller. As Rotten Tomatoes describes, Species features, “Margot, a young intern at the most competitive ER in the country, has trouble keeping up in this stressful environment. As she’s confronted with multiple patients her age presenting unusual symptoms, her own body starts to show disturbing changes.” In the same regard that The Substance tackled body issues and Slanted, race identity, Species uses Fargeat’s framework to discuss Gen Z burnout and how neglecting yourself and your mental health in that process can equally lead to your downfall.
Now, whilst Species and Slanted were squarely enmeshed in similar narrative structures to The Substance, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is less so narratively entwined with Fargeat’s opus. However, that does not mean that Fargeat’s imprint cannot be felt within the recent installment in this zombie franchise. For the final act features our protagonist stumbling round a white-tiled lab with needles as he loses his sanity in a monstrous conglomeration of dismembered body parts. To see Austin Abrams mutated beyond belief is not a hop skip and a jump away from that of the final moments of Elizabeth Sparkle.
Finally, the success of The Substance has transcended even the horror genre to the cinematic universes with the DCU’s Clayface. “Matt Hagen, an aspiring Hollywood star is horrifically scarred in an acid attack and undergoes an experimental treatment that restores his appearance and fame, but at the cost of his sanity and his physical appearance.”. The comic book genre, the genre with which once was the king of the box office, is now directly borrowing Fargeat’s astute observations about audiences and self-loathing to remain relevant and fresh.
Check out the official trailer for Clayface here.
Thereby, the impact that The Substance has had not just upon the horror genre but on the wider film industry cannot be understated. Just when the body-horror genre was becoming irrelevant in an elevated horror landscape, Fargeat re-invigorated the genre to breathe new life into the genre and cinemas at large. Gore, blood, guts and monsters (Oh my!) have come to represent so much more than what’s presented at distorted, monster-face value.
In an era that is obsessed with changing ourselves, with becoming thinner, unbecoming ourselves, auteur directors are showing us that maybe the most horrific part is succumbing to the world telling you to change. Fargeat, Cregger, and a whole host of other filmmakers have recognized that this need to be different is a real cultural fear that instills that same terror in audiences that psychological torment can.
— Darragh Evans