Your Body Is a Horrible Thing

Why body horror is such a popular sub-genre

“If I told you how it tasted, you would never, ever again eat calamari.” — St Gutfree, as he chews through his own intestines to avoid drowning in a swimming pool. From Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted

Summary of Body Horror

Body Horror is an enormous part of the horror genre: a form of horror that creates terror and horror through the violation and mutilation of the human body. It includes blood, guts, brains, knives, chainsaws, zombies, vampires, sex-crazed alien parasites, and cannibalism, to name but a few elements. Suffice to say it is a genre of gratuitous excess.

Body Horror is a genre of gratuitous excess.

It is so effective at shocking audiences that many films and novels use body horror within another genre.

For example, Alien (1979) is a science fiction horror thriller, although its most famous scene is when the chest-burster erupts from the abdomen of an astronaut. You can’t get much more body horror than that!

The Origins of Body Horror

Body horror has existed as long as story-telling itself. Around the world, folk legends feature hideous monsters, curses, and the supernatural. From a literary perspective, the genre of body horror has been attributed to classic Gothic horror stories of the Victorian era, including Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, and Dracula.

Each of these classics presents the human body as something other. The body’s defilement or transformation is central to the plot. The horror itself is used by the author to explore concepts about the human body and challenge the social and cultural norms of that era. I won’t go into detail here, but each has been analyzed extensively in the academic arena.

What’s So Good About Body Horror?

Body horror is more than just frightening your audience with blood and gore. If that’s all you want, the genres of extreme horror and gore are ripe and suppurating, waiting for you to suckle at their diseased teats until your sinuses overflow with the infected pus of their offerings.

In body horror, skilled creators use the physiological revulsion we see in their work to force us to question ideas in their work. Often, this will extend to making the audience question themselves and their own beliefs. In creating a sense of disgust within you, the creator is making you question what you find disgusting, and why this may be the case.

Body Horror exists as a form of commentary, and asks questions as another form of speculative fiction

Here are just two examples of contemporary works that employ body horror to excellent effect:

Antiviral (2012)

Set in the near future, Antiviral features an organization whose sole product is selling the diseases of celebrities to their fans. The diseases cost a fortune, and, when a starlet dies from a disease, the sale of that disease only skyrockets.

The disease is stolen by rival companies, with spies and agents injecting it into their own bodies to conceal it and trade it, becoming infected and damaged in the pursuit of wealth.

In the film, it’s disgusting watching characters obsess over the diseased and dying bodies of celebrities, consuming their diseases and body fluids. However, things like this happen in real life. Dirty underwear is sold online, people buy and consume others’ bathwater, and some go to extraordinary lengths to look like their heroes. Is the movie really so perverse and unusual? Or is it a logical extension of what is already happening? Where will fans draw the line?

Hannibal Trilogy

A brilliant trilogy that all horror fans must read, Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter is a serial-killer genius. In the novels, Lecter is considered a monster by the public, however the reader is frequently exposed to Lecter’s consistent fine taste, and technically exact behavior that establishes him as a misunderstood intellectual.

This is in stark contrast to the vile characters in the novels who represent the forces of justice, who subjugate others and pervert the law to suit themselves.

Filled with memorable scenes, my favorite being Lecter cooking the brains of a police officer before feeding them to that same officer, we can’t help but evaluate the horror scenes against the qualities of the character performing them. Sure, the cop dies from his brain being cut out, but he was a bad guy. A bad guy in a good guy’s role. So, is Hannibal Lecter a good guy in a bad guy’s role? Is he the monster? Or are the constructs of society monstrous?

Can You Stomach It?

Body horror offers yet another way for creative writers to explore dichotomies and contradictions in the way we live our lives. It may only be a jump scare or a scene that makes some lightheaded and sick, but it might also be an excellent jumping-off point to evaluate a film or story and how the concepts apply to you, too.