“One day, a
girl wakes up and finds her flesh rotting… A strange and claustrophobic tale of
sexuality, horror and body fluids… THANATOMORPHOSE”.
(http://thanatomorphosefilm.com/home/)
From writer
and director Eric Falardeau we are brought Thanatomorphose (2012). In the
French dictionary the word Thanatomorphose means “the visible changes after the
death of an organism”; in other words the decay process the human body goes
through post-mortem.
A beautiful
girl wakes up one day to find her body is rotting - literally falling to
pieces. Being in an unhealthy relationship with both physical and mental abuse
she seems to be dying on the outside as well as the inside; her detached state
of mental health starts to manifest quite brutally through bodily bruising and
a rash that spreads continuing with on-going decay of, in a sense, her ‘old life’. The films examination of the
id and the ego encompass frightening portrayals of love, sex and death and it
pulls you into the story both emotionally and physically (with the squirming
and tensing when watching beloved horror). Thanatomorphose is a full on assault
on the audience with decomposing flesh and unsightly scenes; a splatter-gore
hound’s ecstasy. In a review from The Conduit Speaks they state that
Thanatomorphose is
An
incredibly unsettling fantasy sheds more light on the woman's very real fears
of being "consumed" by the men in her life and the loss of limb walks
hand in horrible hand with her loss of self.
(The Conduit Speaks, 2012, http://www.theconduitspeaks.com)
The
protagonist wanders around like a corpse showing no life or interest in
anything in her life. It isn’t until she starts to rot away that she starts to
resemble a human being; living and breathing – with a pulse. Showing an ironic
way of living life and feeling alive inside, Falardeau shows how she gets
fulfilment from the old self rotting away and this is intentional and
methodical. Not just a gore-hounds wet dream.
An image of
a crack in the ceiling; slightly resembling a vagina symbolises and represents
the evolution of the physical and psychological distress of the protagonist and
her disintegration. Like the bruises and the rash – each new circumstance
leaves a mark on the protagonist and the continued breakdown in the self
continues to show throughout the film. Falardeau catapults body horror back
into the horror genre limelight. Actress Kayden Rose is in a naked and
vulnerable state throughout the film and shows raw emotion throughout truly
becoming the narrative.
Falardeau’s
film won Best Movie at 2012′s XXXI
Festival de Cine de Terror de Molins de Rei in Spain and Best Special Makeup Effects
at the A Night of Horror International Film Festival in Australia.
Thanatomorphose will debut at San Diego’s Frequency Film Festival on Thursday,
June 6th 2013. I eagerly await the release of this new edition the body horror
archives and will be straight out to buy it as soon as it becomes available.
The films powerful imagery will long haunt even the most hard-core horror fans.
But will be well worth watch.
Other recent
films that could be said to be similar in their intent towards the audience
would be The Soska Twin’s American Mary and Tom Six’s Human Centipede one, two
and the upcoming third instalment. With these new hard-core and original
directors who like to live on the edge of censorship; we are sure to see a
rising popularity in the horror genre. Not just for the gore but for the
original representations of us as a society – our thoughts, our feelings, our
desires whether repressed or not, horror shows the darkest corners of our minds
and will continue to do so.
By Lea Weller BA
No comments:
Post a Comment