With The Substance becoming one of the most talked-about films of the year, we could be about to witness the resurgence of body horror – a subgenre which focuses on the human body being subjected to mutation, decay, degeneration and transformation. Unlike “torture porn” or any other kind of horror film in which characters are cut to pieces, the violation in body horror usually comes within: it’s more about diseases, parasites and unfortunate scientific experiments than axe-wielding villains or any other external threat. In body horror, it’s often the protagonist who becomes the monster.

The genre has been a vehicle for social commentary and Freudian interrogations of the human psyche, but it’s often at its most powerful simply as an expression of what it’s like to be ill – that sense of your own body turning against you which even a mild stomach bug can inspire. In The Substance, some of the most disturbing scenes are when Demi Moore or Margaret Qualley are simply feeling unwell, stumbling around with nosebleeds and trying not to faint as a terrible piercing sound rings in their ears — who among us hasn’t been there after a heavy night out? 

It would be easy to write a list of body horror films consisting entirely of David Cronenberg – widely considered to be the father of the genre – but there’s a lot more to it than that. From feminist allegories to goofy high school comedies, here are five body horror films which have rightly earned the status of cult classics. 

THE FLY (1986)

This would be a good place to start with Cronenberg. It is the slickest and most accessible of his body horror films, and it was by some measure the most commercially successful. But accessible or not, there is an atmosphere of impending doom and some viscerally disturbing moments. A remake of a 1958 film of the same name, The Fly stars Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who has successfully invented a teleportation device – unfortunately, the first time he tries it out in himself, a housefly slips into the device with him. The rest of the film charts Goldblum’s slow metamorphosis into a grotesque hybrid of insect and man.

VIDEODROME (1983)

Videodrome is a response to the critical backlash that Cronenberg faced earlier in his career – partly because his first films were funded with public grants from the Canadian government, they were widely denounced in his home country. Videodrome asks, what if those critics were right? What if consuming violent media really is as corrupting as they claim? 

The story follows Max (James Woods), the president of a low-rent television station which shows whatever lurid, sensational content will draw in viewers. When he comes across a strange broadcast which seems to show real-life footage of people being tortured and murdered, he immediately decides to snap it up for his own channel. Along the way, he embarks on a romance (of sorts) with a sadomasochistic radio host played by Debbie Harry, who gives a performance so sultry that it’s almost uncomfortable. Max gets drawn into an increasingly paranoid and nightmarish conspiracy, involving snuff films, brain tumours, the development of new bodily orifices and the disintegration of reality itself. Videodrome is disturbing, stylish and powerfully atmospheric – a film that’s likely to stay with you for a long time.

FROM BEYOND (1986)

Directed by Stuart Gordon, From Beyond is an entirely different approach to the genre. Calling it a “comedy” might be a stretch, but the body horror elements are so ridiculously over-the-top that they’re more likely to provoke laughter than existential dread.

Very loosely based on a story by HP Lovecraft, From Beyond opens with two scientists who have been dabbling in a portal to another dimension. When the older – and more evil – of the two has his head ripped off by an unseen creature, his assistant Crawford is charged with his murder and locked up in a mental hospital. Under the initiative of psychiatrist Katherine and with the supervision of Bubba, a likeable police officer, Crawford returns to the scene of the crime to piece together what happened, prove his innocence and destroy the portal for good. From Beyond is played straight, but it is a hilarious film: grotesque to the extent of absurdism and rendered with brilliantly creative practical effects. If you found yourself hootering and hollering at the last ten minutes of The Substance, this is one for you.

SOCIETY (1989)

Directed by Brian Yuzna (who also co-wrote From Beyond), this is another lighter take on the genre, which has as much in common with the 1980s teen comedies of John Hughes as it does with the work of Cronenberg – but it still packs a punch. Society is about a popular, wealthy teenage boy who lives a charmed life in Beverly Hills, until he begins to suspect that his parents, sister and all of their family friends are involved in a murderous conspiracy.

It captures the teenage experience of not being able to trust any of the authority figures in your life: your parents, the police, even your psychiatrist are all out to get you. While – like The Substance – it’s not exactly subtle in its satire, it does a great job of portraying the American upper classes as truly predatory and depraved, and it culminates in one of cinema’s most gleefully disgusting sequences. It has all the gross-out thrills a body horror fan could possibly ask for: slime and goo, flesh melting together, freakishly long tongues, body parts in all the wrong places, and even a character’s face emerging from between two butt cheeks.

TITANE (2021)

Changing gears again (if you’ll forgive the car-related pun), Titane offers an entirely different vision of body horror, one which introduces an element of non-biological transformation — flesh merging with metal, the disintegration of the boundary between body and machine. Directed by Julia Ducarunoe, the film follows Alexia, a woman who has a titanium plate in her head, the result of a car crash which almost killed her as a child. She is also a serial killer who has an erotic obsession with cars and ends up pregnant after a steamy night of passion with a Cadillac (not the last vehicle she has sex with throughout the course of the film.) But pregnant with what? Titane is bold and provocative, raising fundamental questions about the limits of humanity and serving as a reminder of the body horror genre’s continuing power to surprise.