Original Post Date: 05.15.18
I just finished watching the Canadian body horror film Thanatomorphose (2012) and, girlfriend, it was like nothing I had seen before.
As a fervent fan of German director Jorg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) I can appreciate a good scene with a decomposing corpse, I can even see the beauty of a sexy-time scene with said decomposing corpse but, wow, Thanatomorphose took those concepts and ran an extra mile with them! Holy fuck sweet lord baby jesus! (excuse my language, I get extra excited when horror movies elicit in me this feeling of awe… I live for this shit!)
Before I move forward, I would like to show you in a few selected shots how Laura—our main character—slowly disintegrates into nothing.
Putting logic and common sense aside, it was perfectly fine for Laura to just stay alone at her apartment while she sees her body transform from living to dead. Laura never asks for help and even when her love interests offer to take her to the hospital she rudely says no and instead kills them because oh Laura you crazy girl!
All jokes aside, Thanatomorphose is a much needed tale of the human body and the human experience, of the primal fear we all have of dying, of the fear of seeing ourselves disappear. Also, it was really refreshing to see naked bodies, genitals, people having sex, and mind you, it was not pornographic, it was simply human and real.
Now, I have never seen a decomposing corpse in person but I can tell you that the way Laura was morphing was so incredibly believable that it made me feel really uncomfortable, thus me embracing my body as shown on my pic from above. Man, the skin turning black, the maggots, the slime, the flesh falling off… STAAAP! BODY HORROR IS THE WORST!
I have nothing else to say about this indie horror film except that it was good and that you should watch it (but not while you’re eating).
Good night,
- Marath