[Editorial] 8 Body Horror Short films

Body horror is one of the fundamental pillars of the horror genre and crops up in some form or another in a huge variety of works. There's straightforward gore - the inherent horror of seeing the body mutilated, and also more nuanced fears. Changes to the body - whether for more natural reasons like ageing and childbirth, or through injury or disease - are sources of anxiety around the body and translate naturally to horror. Vampire, werewolf, possession, alien invasion - all these subgenres are united by making use in some way of the uncanny sense of not really knowing what’s truly going on in our very own corporeal selves.

Kalley’s Last Review (2020)

Beauty vlogger Kalley is trying to build her brand and has what she believes is a great opportunity to boost her profile. She agrees to test out a new chemical peel made by a new company, but the details are a little sketchy - no ingredients on the containers, and information only available via email. Kalley applies the peel, and her face rapidly deteriorates. The film is presented in a found footage format, as a series of Kalley’s video posts - in each one her determined optimism about the imagined final results becoming more jarringly at odds with the obvious damage to her skin. Kalley’s Last Review is a sharp critique of the murky world of influencer culture, and also taps into deeply ingrained horrors around the commodification of women’s bodies.

Dead Horse (2022)

It’s not just human bodies that can fall under the Body Horror banner - animals play a key part in the genre. Often this comes up in horror as the theme of human anxieties about animals representing a more bestial side of our nature - as in werewolf movies, or a fear of being corrupted by something animalistic - seen in the David Cronenberg’s classic body horror The Fly (1986). Ruby Taylor’s beautifully animated DEAD HORSE takes a different approach, being a body horror from the viewpoint of an actual animal. Set in a snowy forest, we follow a wolf who becomes aware of a supernatural entity which is capturing and skinning animals of the forest - turning them into red, skeletal zombies. It’s a haunting and atmospheric film which takes a fresh perspective on bodies in horror.

Stucco (2020)

Watch Stucco here on Vimeo

In Stucco, the protagonist, J, is an agoraphobic woman newly arrived in an apartment that may be harbouring something just beneath the magnolia paintwork. As J contends with external threats, her own anxiety (and an increasingly nasty cough), the sinister yet seductive presence in her home starts gaining power. Stucco uses the unsettling notion of living body parts enmeshed in inanimate material - an uncanny merging of human and non-human.

Pete’s Putrid Peas (2019)

Watch Pete’s Putrid Pea’s here on Vimeo

Obnoxious YouTuber Pete sets a challenge for himself -to live only on peas for three weeks. He throws himself wholeheartedly into the bizarre task, in the face of warnings from his friends and scathing scepticism from online followers. Pete’s health begins to suffer, and his body sprouts weird growths - a vividly literal case of “you are what you eat”. As the food he consumes and the content he puts out become one and the same, the putrid peas begin to take over both Pete’s physical and mental selves.

Lump (2006)

Watch Lump here on Vimeo

Medical horror Lump follows Christine, a young woman experiencing recurring growths in her breast. As she undergoes operation after operation to remove them, she becomes increasingly suspicious of the motives of the doctors carrying out her treatment. Along with the anxiety of not knowing what is happening to her body, Christine has to contend with the bland dismissal of her concerns by the medical staff, who refuse to directly answer her questions, or explain why she can’t talk to the doctor in charge of her case. Lump is a gritty look at the horror of not being in control of your own body and having to surrender autonomy to the medical establishment.

Toe (2019)

Body parts separated from the whole self naturally take on a weird, unsettling character. In the stop-motion animation Toe, a boy discovers a toe seemingly growing out of the ground. He cuts it from the soil, takes it home and makes the (somewhat unwise) decision to eat it - causing the original owner of the toe to make a bid for its return. Toe is an eerie, atmospheric fairy tale, complete with lonely huts, cawing crows and an ominous monster. Being shot in black and white gives the film a timeless quality, and the level of details in the sets and characters makes the world of the film come vividly to life.

Guts (2021)

Horace is an office worker with an unusual bodily predicament - his guts are on the outside of his body. He gets along reasonably well in everyday life, despite having to cut holes in his shirts to avoid staining and being at constant risk of smearing his surroundings and co-workers with blood. When an aggressively successful new colleague joins his company, Horace is forced to take extreme measures to prove himself. A light-hearted comedic take on body horror, Guts touches on the perils of workplace anxieties and the experience of having your vulnerabilities painfully on show.

Operator (2013)

Body horror often deals with the fear of outside forces taking over control of the body, a theme that is central to Operator. Bob is a worker in a dystopian factory, where the workforce is ruled over by an all-seeing, totalitarian authority that issues commands and warnings through an automated loudspeaker system. Trapped in his workroom, Bob is ambushed by a bloody, alien-like blob that attaches itself to his head and controls his movements. Animated in Claymation, the use of stop motion lends a surreal feel to Bob’s desperate struggle to free himself from the parasite. This short is the first of a series from creator Sam Barnett, so if you enjoyed this episode, there’s more to explore.

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