Why Body Horror is the Most Effective Form of Horror

"Body horror or biological horror is a subgenre of horror that intentionally showcases graphic or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body. These violations may manifest through aberrant sex, mutations, mutilation, zombification, gratuitous violence, disease, or unnatural movements of the body." - Mutations and Metamorphoses, Ronald Allen Lopez Cruz.

After watching Ganja and Hess I realized I wanted to write about my favorite genre of horror, not because this film fits into this genre like many others I will talk about but because it features so many elements of this genre. Most horror films capture some element of body horror. Ganja and Hess pervert the human form by making it something not human, The Exorcist has a little girl twisting into unnatural shapes, The Shining has a decaying corpse walking, Texas Chainsaw Massacre Leatherface cuts up the human body and wears someone else on his face, I Spit On Your Grave decimates the idea of owning your body and mutilates the human form. None of these are strictly body horror but they all contain elements of it. Why? What makes Body Horror so effective?

To explain why I want to also put forth the claim that horror lies in our ability to see ourselves in the situation the characters are in. Not because it is believable but what would be the most terrifying. What situation, no matter how outlandish, would be the most terrifying? I want to claim that your greatest fear for yourself lies in body horror in some form.  

There are two parts to this in relation to body horror that I want to look at, as I go on try to image your fear in those contexts: losing control and perverting the human form.

 Many people will say they are scared of being killed by another person, or a ghost, or being sexually assaulted, or maybe a creepy figure walking towards you is enough. All of these situations are rooted in a loss of control. When you find yourself unable to do anything to stop what is happening. Human beings are creatures that like to be able to control their world, look at how the world is today. City-planning, fences around yards, borders between cities and countries, family structures, racial stereotypes, and gender norms are in every aspect of society. All of these things are meant to package our world in neat little boxes. So when these things are destroyed people get uneasy. Take The Skin I Live In Vincete is forced to have his entire body changed into that of a woman named Vera. He was held captive for the entirety of the procedure and was unable to convince the people around him who he was. He had no ability to take control of his life even at the end of the film. His entire world breaks the mold of who he should be in society and it was not by choice. Similarly in the film, Eraserhead Henry's whole life is one where he is forced to accept decisions made for him, he marries X he raises the baby and his visions lead him to try and kill the baby in the end. 

The point of horror in both films is not about what either character ends up doing but how they do it, without a choice. Each character ends up in a state beyond human. There is a relation to this lack of control in the extreme and the lack of control in the real world. The changing body is something no one can control, it starts most obviously in puberty when adolescences are forced to go through changes that fundamentally alter how they are seen. Girls become women, meant to be objects who lose their innocence. Boys become men and lose their allowance towards emotions and kindness. As adults, your body starts to fail. The older you get the more likely it is that some parts of your body will stop and you have no ability to fix it. Our bodies are a source of anxiety that nearly everyone has and seeing other people lose their control over themselves only reaffirms our fears.



The second part of Body Horror is the actual perversion of the body. This is tied into Freud's theory on the Uncanny once again taken to its most extreme. When a character on screen has their body perverted it is always in a way that still leaves the viewer able to recognize their new form as human. The most iconic example would be The Human Centipede the people in this configuration are still clearly human, the science in the universe backs that up, but they aren't fully human anymore. Take The Fly Seth is still human in form but the film is about him becoming less and less human. Body horror plays on the existential questions of what makes us human, and where the line should be drawn. Are Lindsay, Jenny, and Katsuro still people if they are no longer able to function as people? Is Seth still human even when he is no longer only a human at the genetic level? What does all of this mean for us? What makes people so different from other animals? 

These fears dominate the realm of body horror and the minds of every person who wants to have some understanding of how our world works. When the order of the world is called into question what stops us as people from not fitting in?

Body horror is scary because everyone has a body they cannot control and everyone has a fear about what it will become. And that is why I think it is the most effective form of horror.