being disabled, body horror has easily become one of my favorite sub genres. i can connect with the terror of your own body betraying what you’ve known prior, and being able to see the emotional turmoil represented in such visceral ways really helps me to process my own grief and anxieties surrounding my body.
That's a really interesting perspective. I myself am not disabled, but have lived life with scoliosis. I felt very much like my body had betrayed me and there was nothing I could do about it. And the thing about having a deformity is you can see it. Not everyone else can sometimes, but I know how uneven and twisted my own body is all of the time.
THIS OMFG WOW I hadn’t realize why I’m so drawn to watching body horror & you PERFECTLY described my experience. So hey thanks for commenting this I guess cause it would’ve taken me a lot more time and self reflection to make that connection between my disability and love of body horror lol! :)
I have HIV, and when I was first diagnosed, the medication I was put on took most of the fat from under my cheekbones. For a while, I looked very, very gaunt, but then my face settled into something that was much more sculpted than the chubby visage I had all the way up to then. It was a real-life body horror of sorts, with its own transformation and acceptance.
I lost 70 pounds after I relapsed into my eating disorder after leaving an abusive marriage. It really is real life body horror when you're changing so much that you don't recognize yourself until you finally settle into it. Or in my case, suddenly becoming a more "socially acceptable" size and having to readjust to living in society in a whole new body that was suddenly treated as more valuable just because it was smaller. I hope you're doing okay now 💖💖💖
Body horror in particular always hit me harder than any other subgenre of horror. The feeling like your body is actively betraying you, the sense of an enemy within that is inescapable, intimate, and beyond your control is more terrifying to me than any killer in a mask. My first brush with body horror came when watching Beetlejuice for the first time. Seeing the mutilated bodies of the dead in the afterlife really nailed home to me that one day was literally going to turn into a corpse and, eventually, a skeleton. The body horror behind aging and death alone was enough to scare and fascinate me for the rest of my life.
The shrunken head hunter, always cracked me up when I was a kid, along with the guy hanging from a contraption, because he’s been flattened, with tire tracks across him.
I think one element that makes body horror so special is its emphasis on practical effects. In a world that leans so heavily on CGI, it's nice to see makeup artists, set designers, and puppeteers get to flex their impressive skills. (Also ik, there are good body horror films with CGI (ex: Junji Ito's Uzumaki), but practical effects are a dying art and I think it's a large staple in the body horror genre and it deserves appreciation!)
Yes seeing the practical effects and makeup reminds me of the creativity that the artists have to put in the hands on work. It's terrifying and captivating.
100% agree. It's not like CGI isn't a positive technological development for society, but it does feel like it's leaned on so heavily and good or even "bad" practical effects are absolutely an art form that does so much more for the immersion and impact of a film.
This is great, body horror really is such a personal genre. Like you say, it’s “What is wrong with me?” instead of “What is wrong with the world?” I love the “Release” part of it. So much of what sucks about inner struggle is the intense privacy of it, and yeah, seeing that made very very public is weirdly liberating.
I have a complex relationship with body horror. On one hand, I’m squeamish af and the fragility of the human form being exploited in grotesque ways makes me sick. On the other, though, I have intense body dysmorphia/gender dysphoria, and the idea of breaking down this flesh prison and rebuilding it into something new is probably the most philosophically liberating concept I’ve ever come across.
Body horror is my absolute favorite genre of horror. The Thing(1982) is one of my all time favorite movies. Watching this video makes me wonder why. Why do I love this genre so much? I think that as a black woman who has a history of sexual abuse as well as a history of not being listened to by my caregivers and medical providers, it’s cathartic because I have lost my bodily autonomy many times. I recently gave birth to my first child and I while I love her more than anything in the world, the experience of pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and the postpartum process gives me body dysmorphia. Somehow, seeing others go through these terrible transformations makes me feel better about how my own body has transformed during puberty, chronic illness, sexual assault, and now pregnancy and childbirth.
I never even finished "The Human Centipede", since I was incredibly grossed out by the overwhelmingly insane premise, but I'll drop everything to watch Yhara's video!
Wow, the themes of rebirth and transformation reminded me of The Metamorphosis by Kafka. It wasn’t until the protagonist transformed into an insect did he also gain a deeper understanding of where his misery comes from. The insect didn’t gain empowerment, but he did gain some form of power in enlightenment of his own circumstances.
The fly was one of the most shocking body horror movies I’ve ever seen, 80’s body horror is fantastic at actually making you cringe, evil dead made me sick, Hellraiser creeped me out a ton!
I am trans, and for years, even before coming out, I felt like Cronenberg movies just showed what the experience of having a body was. Body horror has always felt extremely cathartic. Happy to see this is a somewhat common experience.
As a person with a skin picking disorder that flares up violently during times of stress, body horror really resonates. I'm always worried about the disgust people would feel if they knew all the tiny open wounds and grotesqueness that lurks all over my body.
I also have a skin picking disorder but I absolutely despise body horror and it might be because being reminded of the horrors of the body reminds me of my disorder in a way and I feel gross since I haven’t really come to terms with that part of myself yet. I’m happy you can resonate with the body horror genre though.
I don't have a disorder (I think) but I have an inability to leave my acne alone and also a body which loves growing acne in my tits of all places. It's been a pretty ego lowering thing especially when I think about every being intimate with a partner and worrying about all the scars from something like acne I'll probably have forever. I hadn't really thought of it in terms of body horror before but this comment makes a lot of sense and actually makes me feel a bit better lol. Now if only my scabs would let me turn into a cool roach monster
i hated body horror before i watched black swan and now i resonate with it. i have a similar problem as you (constantly picking at my face and arm acne) and i remember the look on my sister’s face when she saw how scabby my arms were. it made me feel terrible lol. but honestly seeing other people who have the same problem as me helps me feel better.
So much same. Sometimes body horror really gets to my brain in a bad way, especially if it's too realistic, but in some ways I love that these things exist even when I don't watch them? Bodies are weird! Not just mine! It's a whole known part of the human condition! It helps, not feeling like I'm the only one who is secretly horrifying. An aside because it's helped me: There's a supplement called N-acetylcysteine or NAC. Not a miracle thing, but inexpensive, reasonably safe, and I had a very noticeable improvement on it. There's studies, not just woo-woo stuff, and it's worth looking at if you've got body-focused repetitive behavior issues.
Dermatillomania. It's hard to admit, even to yourself, that you compulsively pick at your own body until it bleeds, then pick it again and again and again. Mine started when I was 9. Hiding in my closet and scratching or picking at my head until it bled. I couldn't wait for it to scab over. I know that sounds gross but the brief pain was a good pain that deterred my anguish from my reality and helped me focus on something else for a second or two. I've never told anyone close to me that I do it. I only pick on my head so I guess I'm fortunate in a way that nobody can see the wounds and ask me about it, as I have long hair that easily hides the scars and scabs. It's something I definitely still struggle with but seeing others admit to or talking about it really does help alleviate that layer of stress. I appreciate your comment and everyone else who responded. As cliché as it sounds, knowing I'm not the only one dealing with something not talked about helps. I'm becoming a tiny bit less ashamed of myself and realizing
For the past couple of months, I've been suffering from a medical condition that has, at times, given me an acute sense of disgust at my own body for breaking down in the specific way that it does. Listening to you about fictional body horror in this way was oddly therapeutic for me, so thank you very much for that.
as a trans person and someone who struggles with an ED body horror has always resonated very deeply for me, thank you for making the video! have a lovely day
I've never enjoyed body horror and when I saw the thumbnail video I was low-key dreading it. But I clicked anyway because I love your work and honestly? I've been dealing with a year or so of sudden onset chronic pain and medical problems and it's been absolute hell. So talking about body horror as a catharsis for dealing with this sort of thing... it really spoke to me. I can't say I'm likely to seek out body horror anymore than I was before, but the perspective was something I really needed. Thank you.
Love the use of Sophie in this video! Body horror is typically a little too difficult for me to watch, so thank you for helping me understand it better.
As someone who has a different body due to something very unfortunate that’s happened to me, that ruin section resonated with me. Being fine but slowly and painfully learning how different I am now and how I can be found out to be different. But trying learn that I am okay with this and I can survive accept myself without trying to ignore or repress. The way you broke down Teeth was wonderful
Dark Water (2002) also traumatized me. Not so much the end of the movie, but nearer the beginning when it was still setting the atmosphere. I still think of that scene in the elevator, when the mother is gripping a child's hand but her daughter rushes out as the doors open and yet there is still someone holding her hand.
Huge respect for talking about trans people. Puberty was real life body horror for a lot of us. Learning to embrace it, becoming stronger in our sense of self, it's cathartic and powerful
It's really sad that body horror has such a bad rep, and you spoke very well of why so many people love it in such a personal way. I've loved body horror forever, and I think for me it's because I've never really felt comfortable talking about myself, so my personal world was always very hidden, which takes a lot of energy and makes me feel very isolated and misunderstood. Body horror, to me, was so cathartic because its subject had to stop hiding their "true" self, no matter if it was ugly or not, and, as you said, was fine afterwards.
Always a pleasure to see Yhara post a new video. It's a great video. And it made me think of the ways body horror/gore has been cathartic to me. Back when I was in elementary school I started getting into it, with books like The Perfume by Patrick Süskind and then Resident Evil in the PlayStation. Back then, my father and his brothers subjected my sisters, my brother and me to a lot of abuse. All kinds of abuse. And I remember body horror somehow made me feel somehow more in control in a situation where I had absolutely none and felt like no one cared for us and I'd rather just stop feeling. The transformations into monsters in RE, Silent Hill, later the body horror descriptions in the Hellraiser book, all of that, somehow it helped me. Feel control, like I could see the ugly coming to light, for everyone to see, feel catharsis and like I could find beauty in the grotesque, because it meant something there. It was used to give meaning and have a reason. We luckily left that environment eventually but I have always used gore/body horror art ever since then as a way to express or vent. I think you did an amazing job with this video, thank you very much for it!
Not gonna lie, I turned this on in the background because I'm incredibly squeamish. I find the concept of visceral horror very interesting, but I can't watch it (to be specific, I find no enjoyment or catharsis, just discomfort and, in the worst cases, vivid nightmares). I can't watch medical dramas, boxing, or American football, either 😂 I just flinch repeatedly and look away.
@@nhvkuy4675 haha hopefully! The peculiar thing is that when I was a young child, I was fascinated by horror. I'd always read the back of horror movies even though I never tried to rent any, and I loved shows like "Are You Afraid of the Dark" and books like the "Goosebumps" series. Then when I was 7, my baby sister was born with a serious health condition. She died 6 months later, and it was like a switch flipped in my head. Horror was a total no-go. (Around the same time I also stopped puking after riding in a car for even a few minutes and just got motion sick. This is also when I developed arachnophobia out of the blue. No idea if either of those are related, but it's an interesting coincidence.)
Once, Seth Brundle dreamed he was a fly, a fly buzzing around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Seth Brundle. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Seth Brundle. But he didn't know if he was Seth Brundle who had dreamt he was a fly, or a fly dreaming that he was Seth Brundle. Between Seth Brundle and the fly there must be some distinction! This is called the Fly, 1986, by David Cronenberg.
Watching this while being a very pregnant person gave me the same catharsis as watching some of my favorite horror movies. Thanks for the great essay. I always look forward to your work!
I could honestly listen to you talk movies all day. Not only do you have the most wonderful voice/way of speaking, you’ve got the most incredible and thought-provoking takes. I never really stopped to give body horror this kind of consideration because my knee-jerk reaction to the genre is “curl up in self defense and look away,” lol. But now I see that’s a response to be expected since body horror strikes a chord in everyone, whether we realize it or not. Thank you for this latest awesome video! ♥️
So, this has made me wonder, does Sophie's transformation into an old woman in Howl's Moving Castle qualify as mild body horror? It actually follows along with the thematics, suddenly being cursed into the form of an old woman (ruin), the process of adjusting to this, running away, realizing she's angry about being cursed (rebirth), coming to terms with herself, expressing her anger and discontent when she feels it instead of just bottling it up, since she feels like, well, she's an old woman now, why hold back (release). Of course, it's a fairy tale, so eventually the curse is broken. But sort of a moment with the mild body horror of aging. Anyway, I enjoyed the video, body horror has never been a genre that appealed to me, but I do love good, intriguing thematics, and well, learning what the appeal is. Probably not going to take up body horror media tbh, but I have more of an appreciation for it now.
love the argument that watching horror movies is a form of meditation. I definitely think there's some truth to that in the sense that they force us to reflect on our thoughts, actions, and lives
I’ve been thinking about my attachment to this genre a lot lately. As my chronic illness has progressed and I’ve come to term with being incurable diseased, I have definitely found myself more fascinated with body horrro.
NBC Hannibal's crime scenes are my personal favorite examples of body horror, and I think that a lot of times body horror is about giving the viewers the impression "look at that miserable thing. I wish I could kill it just so it's suffering can come to an end" and in Hannibal, you get this gut-wrenching feeling even while looking at the corpses, the grotesque unalive 'works of art' as it's portrayed in the show.
As a horror writer and reader specifically who writes queer body horror, I really appreciate this video. So many people completely disregard it as artless Slug Girl is a huge inspiration for me when reading through a trans perspective. Not only does she have her transformation but it also deals with the rejection by family. I've long believed the fall of splatterpunk books sunk the opportunities of queer horror writers for decades
I honestly think that a good example of body horror is twilight breaking dawn part one. It's Like a monsters take on pregnancy and I think they captured the horror of it and the grotesque quite well.
body horror is one of my fav genres so I love seeing it treated w some respect and examination.. I was like YEAH LITERALLY when you were talking about The Stuff it was such a good premise but such a weak execution. I saw a showing of it at a film society where they had a food expert discuss the realities of like fda approval and contamination and such and what the stuff mightve been like more realistically and it was scarier than the film lol
Body horror is one of my favorite genres too. As someone who had surgery as a baby, and was gifted my mom's gallstones, it does feel cathartic and comforting.
Teeth are scary, put teeth on anything and it looks weird and creepy almost instantly. There's reason why teeth are drawn very abstract or not at all in cartooning and graphic design. Also, I've seen and enjoyed many of those movies, but I really like The Thing. I've seen it so many times and always enjoy the sense of paranoia in all the characters and how they act on it. I get to feel anxious and paranoid along with the characters, but it feels fun and intriguing instead of plain awful.
This is why I play a Tzimisce (body horror type vampires) in Vampire the Masquerade. My girl has lamprey tentacles sprouting between her legs because all her life she was being prepped to be breeding stock. She has a pretty strange worldview, like many of her kind. And her body's various modifications can and often do react to her emotional state. It's very cathartic for me to play her asI deal with a lot of my feelings on my body, my lllnesses, my sense of womanhood and insecurities by pretending to be her.
So I cant watch this cause body horror makes me FAINT so I'm leaving a comment so your video gets some kind of engagement! Love your videos! I'll tune in next time! :)
@@anonymousfellow8879 I had to get stitches on my finger and I almost threw up anytime I had to look at them. I adore horror but body horror is the only thing I can't handle!
I've recently took up a further interest in the genre, having gone through my own body horror experience last year. A severe health crisis led to my body becoming unrecognizable and I had to navigate feeling like a stranger in my own skin. I'm doing a lot better now, but I think these films are helping me process what happened and what could happen again, and how I can learn to exist within that framework. Wonderful video; keep up the good work!
As a 500 hour certified yoga teacher, with 140 extra hours of training in a kind of meditation technique called yoga nidra, who has loved body horror since I was too small of a child and saw the fly - I approve this message.
I think it is worth mentioning a rather insane game, that i feel does a very great job at capturing these themes, called “fear and hunger” (spoiler warning) at the end of the first game (in the ending A play through cause there are like 12 different endings) you and your party travel to the lowest part of the prison you are trapped within. Amongst your company is a young girl who you have protected throughout the game. Being your first party member, she is incredibly weak and fragile. When you arrive at the final depths she suddenly turns pale and begins a horrifying transformation (which act as the phases for the boss fight in each stage). As the companion you knew throughout the experience rapidly transforms into a new being, you can only survive its collateral attacks from this uncontrollable evolution before it is reborn as “the god of fear and hunger.” Its final act to you upon its metamorphosis is mercy, as it watches over you as you peacefully bleed to death. Telling you to rest, and take peace in the inevitable. Considering F&H is definitively the most difficult game i have ever played this moment was so shockingly cathartic and so different than the prior experience, and created a beautiful moment i still vividly remember. If you can stomach the subject material (which is admittedly highly disturbing) it’s a wonderful experience strongly recommend
As an autistic person, body horror has always helped me feel connected to others- I can draw a horrific, bloody image to help convey certain sensations with neurotypically functioning people. Those would involve teeth, eyes, but most importantly- skin. The sensation of your skin constantly on your body seeming so different from how others notice it...when I'm having sensory overload, often I resort to drawings with horrific imagery to best convey the internal sensation the external stimuli creates in me- so non autistic people can visualize the agony of the skin being ripped from your body, so they can understand how it feels when I have a panic attack in the grocery store- or having a parasite slipped into your baren spinal cord to simulate how a certain texture affects your body.
Any sort of horror is something I find really comforting as someone who has anxiety and OCD. It’s cathartic and comforting, I used to go to sleep while watching/listening to horror
Love this video. And it's not even Halloween. Speaking of body horror, as a weeb, i tend to also think of alot of mature anime films like Akira, and parts of Paprika. Tho i dunno how thematically they tie to body horror as most of the films here do. I think the most body horror anime i've seen is Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack, which i think is based on a Junji Ito story, tho I can't remember if that's real or not. Mainly with what's causing fish and sharks to attack people on land, which from what I remember scarred me from it's concept when it was finally revealed. Also the more psychological aspects of horror from Black Swan i remember referenced alot of the anime film Perfect Blue, especially the bath scene.
I love your videos so much. I love how often you talk about horror movies(my fave genre) and I love *how* you speak about them and the reverence you give them through your essays. Horror movies are so easy to disregard and so often get brutalized by critics for having the audacity to show the ‘uglier’ side of existence. I love your content 💗
I've always enjoyed body horror as a psychological story but it tends to cut straight to my lily liver. It's not the gore, it's not the uncanny, it's the deformity of your body, the betrayal of becoming a monster. Maybe because I have always been a fat person, and growing up my body didn't belong it me, it was the nightmare of others, it was an object of disgust and desire and none of that was mine. I've always been very neutral on my body.
Okay this video hit harder than I thought. I have tinnitus and there are some days where I just can’t help but wish to escape my own body. This video really resonated with that feeling. And it also gave me hope that maybe I can live with tinnitus and not crawl out of my skin.
as an artist, I started drawing body horror around last year when roe was overturned. I got really bad anxiety about my own body, and how it could make my life hell if something dreadful were to happen. body horror has helped me feel more in control of how I present myself; for me, it’s a massive “fuck you” to the objectification of women by portraying my body how I feel in it, rather than how other people may see it. it’s honest and uncompromising, and I think there’s something beautiful about that.
Id be real curious how you'd respond to Julia Ducournau's work, she's about the closest thing we have to a spiritual successor to Cronenberg. Sapphic, extremely French Cronenberg
This video is PERFECTION 😍 This so succinctly puts into words what I adore and find fascinating about body horror... plus, Ponyboy over the title card? The taste, IMPECCABLE 💖 Edit: oh my god i cant believe i mixed up my SOPHIE songs nooooo
I've never been afraid of horror movies. Even as a young girl. Horror was an escape from real life for me. Real life is what has always terrified me. Thank you for bringing up Nightmare on Elm Street 4. It's my favorite horror movie
This is one of the best video essay about this kind of topic I've ever seen on yt. Not only did it help with my screenwriting for the limited horror body tv series for my diploma, but also made me even more excited about body horror. Thank you so much, great editing, great opinion and arguments.
Can't watch this one because body horror triggers my trichophobia, even though I spent all of last week binging all of your videos end to end. Still came through to drive that engagement though, must support my melanated creators. Love everything you do Yhara.
There is a small and very interesting sect of buddhist monks that subject themselves regularly to watching incredibly gorey and disturbing videos as a form of meditation. The reasoning behind it is pretty complex so I won't get into it, but you can unknowingly stumble upon playlists made by someone with these beliefs on RUclips and they are suuuper fucking creepy. There's just chanting over the images of violence or rotting flesh.
@@JohnSmith-wi4xo it was in an east Asian language that I don't speak or read so I don't know what it's called. I can go find a video I remember mentioning and exploring it though.
I watched this video when it came out while not really watching any horror. And now after more than a year, I've watched most of the film mentioned in this and many more body horror and horror movies in general. I became so attached probably because my struggle with my own body and gender identity. I even made a sound art piece for my contemporary sound art class in college about body transformation (I kind of incorporate the three Rs structure in my piece actually). So thank you for introducing me to probably my favorite film subgenre and making this, my favorite video essay. This also has like the best soundtrack for any video essay ever.
It's really interesting to hear what people love about this genre as someone who can't really watch it at all! Weird to note I have the opposite experience to a lot of people in the comments here who say they enjoy body horror because of chronic illness. I feel like after my experiences with chronic illness it's all too real to me and I want to avoid it as much as possible, otherwise it brings up a lot of trauma. I also have really high empathy so I struggle to watch anything where people are in pain, I have to hide behind my sofa cushions 😆
I do not mess with the premise of Tusk, so I will be throwing my phone down like reading smut in public if that stuff comes up for more than 10 seconds. Congrats for having the guts to focus on such a divisive topic
Finally, a realy good video analysis on my favorite horror subgenre!! Especially since I have a huuuuuuuge fascination of the art of transformation ^_^
Also! The movie where she turns into a coachroach - have you read Kahfka’s Metamorphosis? I would be surprised if that movie wasn’t influenced by that work! Love your content!
fiction is such a great avenue for talking about bodies. what makes it great about the body is it is immediate, it has a form, and it has limits. so seeing that form change, those limits be breached, and something as immediate as our bodies be warped is intriguing in itself. and no matter who we are and what material possessions we have, we can all be victim to something that affects and limits our bodies. and that's fucking cool to see how one deals with it. on another note i love that you used sophie here, her music Fucks
This is one of the best video essays. Ive been a huge body horror fan for my whole life and found more and more that it represents beauty to me, an exploration and evolution into something unbound and yet still based on humanity. Im not being as eloquent as this video essay is, but I hope it made some bit of sense.
As an intersex person in my teenage years body horror was my outlet and the only genre I could relate to and saw my body and my confusion, fear and shame about it represented and seen. Now I'm in my 30s, love my intersex body so much but still love body horror just as much :') Great video, thank you sm!
The cockroach transformation is scary right up until its completion and then it becomes comedic (like a lot of Freddy film scenes). I suppose the terror of transformation itself is the horror - being trapped between two states - a successful transformation brings us to a stage of finality we can then deal.
Another fantastic video! I really started getting into body horror in my early/mid 20's while spending 2 years working as a domestic care worker for elderly, physically disabled and mentally ill people. It was all pretty depressing but what really traumatised me was being young but having this intimate daily understanding what aging is like. Having the personality, thoughts, awareness, mental abilities and needs of your 25 year old self but having the agency of a new born baby, trapped in a prison of your very own flesh, the tools of your actualisation being indifferent and unresponsive to your will... But yeah because of this I felt very alone and isolated from most people so watching Body Horror was and still is really therapeutic. It's hard to describe but seeing these things portrayed so bluntly just goes to show that there's others out there with this understanding of the potential horrors of life. Seeing these biological things phrased as an external force speaks volumes about the human experience
Body horror is one of those I will watch a bunch in a go and then not touch it again for years. Recently I've been slowly circling back to it as I've had to deal with the ripple effects of internal scar tissue and coming into my mid thirties. Its fuckin rough having a body that no longer works in ways it did before, does new things that hurt, and cuts you off in ways from what you were before. Watching this while half bed ridden was a uniquely interesting experince and has given me some new ways to look at it. Even without that, an absolute top notch video, thank you for your wonderful work!
Yeah, this is my absolute favorite horror subgenre. One of the things it resonates along is my persistent backdrop of health anxiety which is tied to weird gender feelings and self-focused tokophobia all rolled into one. I like the liminal spaces like the Release part of the genre too. Superficially because I'm biracial and nonbinary. But also have been through so much personal trauma (not going to get into that in your comments section) and just somehow... persisting. (So one of my favorite categories of monsters are the Undead - especially the process of Turning and perhaps accepting that new existence.)
the FG rating was a tad more appropriate with the uncensored version but i had to censor so it’s really just a light FG
What does FG mean
What is that song tho
@@amerashi1111 at the beginning of the video, i gave it a fake mpaa rating of “fg” for “f--ing gross” lol
@@Yharazayd Oh lol i usually listen to videos when playing minecraft or something
I love your videos just a small thing I wanted to point out was it's you spelt M Night Shyamalan wrong
being disabled, body horror has easily become one of my favorite sub genres. i can connect with the terror of your own body betraying what you’ve known prior, and being able to see the emotional turmoil represented in such visceral ways really helps me to process my own grief and anxieties surrounding my body.
That's a really interesting perspective. I myself am not disabled, but have lived life with scoliosis. I felt very much like my body had betrayed me and there was nothing I could do about it. And the thing about having a deformity is you can see it. Not everyone else can sometimes, but I know how uneven and twisted my own body is all of the time.
@@dikhed1983 well if it aint mr scoliosis
@venusbloodflow wow you took that seriously maybe you need to take jokes
@venusbloodflow funny little dummy
THIS OMFG WOW I hadn’t realize why I’m so drawn to watching body horror & you PERFECTLY described my experience. So hey thanks for commenting this I guess cause it would’ve taken me a lot more time and self reflection to make that connection between my disability and love of body horror lol! :)
I have HIV, and when I was first diagnosed, the medication I was put on took most of the fat from under my cheekbones. For a while, I looked very, very gaunt, but then my face settled into something that was much more sculpted than the chubby visage I had all the way up to then. It was a real-life body horror of sorts, with its own transformation and acceptance.
I lost 70 pounds after I relapsed into my eating disorder after leaving an abusive marriage. It really is real life body horror when you're changing so much that you don't recognize yourself until you finally settle into it. Or in my case, suddenly becoming a more "socially acceptable" size and having to readjust to living in society in a whole new body that was suddenly treated as more valuable just because it was smaller.
I hope you're doing okay now 💖💖💖
How did you get it
@@madmonty4761 that’s a very personal question to be asking
@venusbloodflow ha ha
I am sorry you are doing better today
Body horror in particular always hit me harder than any other subgenre of horror. The feeling like your body is actively betraying you, the sense of an enemy within that is inescapable, intimate, and beyond your control is more terrifying to me than any killer in a mask. My first brush with body horror came when watching Beetlejuice for the first time. Seeing the mutilated bodies of the dead in the afterlife really nailed home to me that one day was literally going to turn into a corpse and, eventually, a skeleton. The body horror behind aging and death alone was enough to scare and fascinate me for the rest of my life.
The shrunken head hunter, always cracked me up when I was a kid, along with the guy hanging from a contraption, because he’s been flattened, with tire tracks across him.
I think one element that makes body horror so special is its emphasis on practical effects. In a world that leans so heavily on CGI, it's nice to see makeup artists, set designers, and puppeteers get to flex their impressive skills.
(Also ik, there are good body horror films with CGI (ex: Junji Ito's Uzumaki), but practical effects are a dying art and I think it's a large staple in the body horror genre and it deserves appreciation!)
Yes seeing the practical effects and makeup reminds me of the creativity that the artists have to put in the hands on work. It's terrifying and captivating.
There is just something so visceral about practical effects that CGI always lacks in my experience.
100% agree. It's not like CGI isn't a positive technological development for society, but it does feel like it's leaned on so heavily and good or even "bad" practical effects are absolutely an art form that does so much more for the immersion and impact of a film.
This is great, body horror really is such a personal genre. Like you say, it’s “What is wrong with me?” instead of “What is wrong with the world?”
I love the “Release” part of it. So much of what sucks about inner struggle is the intense privacy of it, and yeah, seeing that made very very public is weirdly liberating.
I have a complex relationship with body horror. On one hand, I’m squeamish af and the fragility of the human form being exploited in grotesque ways makes me sick. On the other, though, I have intense body dysmorphia/gender dysphoria, and the idea of breaking down this flesh prison and rebuilding it into something new is probably the most philosophically liberating concept I’ve ever come across.
Body horror is my absolute favorite genre of horror. The Thing(1982) is one of my all time favorite movies. Watching this video makes me wonder why. Why do I love this genre so much? I think that as a black woman who has a history of sexual abuse as well as a history of not being listened to by my caregivers and medical providers, it’s cathartic because I have lost my bodily autonomy many times. I recently gave birth to my first child and I while I love her more than anything in the world, the experience of pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and the postpartum process gives me body dysmorphia. Somehow, seeing others go through these terrible transformations makes me feel better about how my own body has transformed during puberty, chronic illness, sexual assault, and now pregnancy and childbirth.
faceshopping in the background.....perfect music choice omg
I never even finished "The Human Centipede", since I was incredibly grossed out by the overwhelmingly insane premise, but I'll drop everything to watch Yhara's video!
Whew yeah it's one of those things that I just can't stomach, boundaries are weird like that.
I thought that the human centipede was a very common childhood idea. I remember joking about it in school years before the movie.
Agreed. I can get through a lot of movies with body horror and enjoy them, but The Human Centipede is a no for me.
@@burgermind802 are you doing okay?
i love body horror but the human centipede is something i will never do to myself, that might make me a fake fan but girl i can’t do it 😔
Wow, the themes of rebirth and transformation reminded me of The Metamorphosis by Kafka. It wasn’t until the protagonist transformed into an insect did he also gain a deeper understanding of where his misery comes from. The insect didn’t gain empowerment, but he did gain some form of power in enlightenment of his own circumstances.
The fly was one of the most shocking body horror movies I’ve ever seen, 80’s body horror is fantastic at actually making you cringe, evil dead made me sick, Hellraiser creeped me out a ton!
I am trans, and for years, even before coming out, I felt like Cronenberg movies just showed what the experience of having a body was. Body horror has always felt extremely cathartic. Happy to see this is a somewhat common experience.
As a person with a skin picking disorder that flares up violently during times of stress, body horror really resonates. I'm always worried about the disgust people would feel if they knew all the tiny open wounds and grotesqueness that lurks all over my body.
I also have a skin picking disorder but I absolutely despise body horror and it might be because being reminded of the horrors of the body reminds me of my disorder in a way and I feel gross since I haven’t really come to terms with that part of myself yet. I’m happy you can resonate with the body horror genre though.
I don't have a disorder (I think) but I have an inability to leave my acne alone and also a body which loves growing acne in my tits of all places. It's been a pretty ego lowering thing especially when I think about every being intimate with a partner and worrying about all the scars from something like acne I'll probably have forever. I hadn't really thought of it in terms of body horror before but this comment makes a lot of sense and actually makes me feel a bit better lol. Now if only my scabs would let me turn into a cool roach monster
i hated body horror before i watched black swan and now i resonate with it. i have a similar problem as you (constantly picking at my face and arm acne) and i remember the look on my sister’s face when she saw how scabby my arms were. it made me feel terrible lol. but honestly seeing other people who have the same problem as me helps me feel better.
So much same. Sometimes body horror really gets to my brain in a bad way, especially if it's too realistic, but in some ways I love that these things exist even when I don't watch them? Bodies are weird! Not just mine! It's a whole known part of the human condition! It helps, not feeling like I'm the only one who is secretly horrifying.
An aside because it's helped me: There's a supplement called N-acetylcysteine or NAC. Not a miracle thing, but inexpensive, reasonably safe, and I had a very noticeable improvement on it. There's studies, not just woo-woo stuff, and it's worth looking at if you've got body-focused repetitive behavior issues.
Dermatillomania. It's hard to admit, even to yourself, that you compulsively pick at your own body until it bleeds, then pick it again and again and again. Mine started when I was 9. Hiding in my closet and scratching or picking at my head until it bled. I couldn't wait for it to scab over. I know that sounds gross but the brief pain was a good pain that deterred my anguish from my reality and helped me focus on something else for a second or two. I've never told anyone close to me that I do it. I only pick on my head so I guess I'm fortunate in a way that nobody can see the wounds and ask me about it, as I have long hair that easily hides the scars and scabs. It's something I definitely still struggle with but seeing others admit to or talking about it really does help alleviate that layer of stress. I appreciate your comment and everyone else who responded. As cliché as it sounds, knowing I'm not the only one dealing with something not talked about helps. I'm becoming a tiny bit less ashamed of myself and realizing
Horror: Make you scare of dying
Body Horror: Make existence a terror
For the past couple of months, I've been suffering from a medical condition that has, at times, given me an acute sense of disgust at my own body for breaking down in the specific way that it does. Listening to you about fictional body horror in this way was oddly therapeutic for me, so thank you very much for that.
as a trans person and someone who struggles with an ED body horror has always resonated very deeply for me, thank you for making the video! have a lovely day
I've never enjoyed body horror and when I saw the thumbnail video I was low-key dreading it. But I clicked anyway because I love your work and honestly? I've been dealing with a year or so of sudden onset chronic pain and medical problems and it's been absolute hell. So talking about body horror as a catharsis for dealing with this sort of thing... it really spoke to me. I can't say I'm likely to seek out body horror anymore than I was before, but the perspective was something I really needed. Thank you.
Body horror is one of the best types of horror. Besides the good special effects, they have a lot of charm and scares.
Body horror is the only way I’ve found to accurately portray the visceral horror of dysphoria, it hits like nothing else
Love the use of Sophie in this video! Body horror is typically a little too difficult for me to watch, so thank you for helping me understand it better.
The SOPHIE and death grips within the first five minutes is impeccable :D sets the mood perfectly
I've had many surgeries from when I was a kid so the body horror subgenre has always been very personal to me.
As someone who has a different body due to something very unfortunate that’s happened to me, that ruin section resonated with me. Being fine but slowly and painfully learning how different I am now and how I can be found out to be different. But trying learn that I am okay with this and I can survive accept myself without trying to ignore or repress. The way you broke down Teeth was wonderful
Dark Water (2002) also traumatized me. Not so much the end of the movie, but nearer the beginning when it was still setting the atmosphere. I still think of that scene in the elevator, when the mother is gripping a child's hand but her daughter rushes out as the doors open and yet there is still someone holding her hand.
Huge respect for talking about trans people. Puberty was real life body horror for a lot of us. Learning to embrace it, becoming stronger in our sense of self, it's cathartic and powerful
It's really sad that body horror has such a bad rep, and you spoke very well of why so many people love it in such a personal way.
I've loved body horror forever, and I think for me it's because I've never really felt comfortable talking about myself, so my personal world was always very hidden, which takes a lot of energy and makes me feel very isolated and misunderstood.
Body horror, to me, was so cathartic because its subject had to stop hiding their "true" self, no matter if it was ugly or not, and, as you said, was fine afterwards.
When new Yhara drops the streets gonna love it regardless
Always a pleasure to see Yhara post a new video.
It's a great video. And it made me think of the ways body horror/gore has been cathartic to me. Back when I was in elementary school I started getting into it, with books like The Perfume by Patrick Süskind and then Resident Evil in the PlayStation.
Back then, my father and his brothers subjected my sisters, my brother and me to a lot of abuse. All kinds of abuse. And I remember body horror somehow made me feel somehow more in control in a situation where I had absolutely none and felt like no one cared for us and I'd rather just stop feeling. The transformations into monsters in RE, Silent Hill, later the body horror descriptions in the Hellraiser book, all of that, somehow it helped me. Feel control, like I could see the ugly coming to light, for everyone to see, feel catharsis and like I could find beauty in the grotesque, because it meant something there. It was used to give meaning and have a reason. We luckily left that environment eventually but I have always used gore/body horror art ever since then as a way to express or vent.
I think you did an amazing job with this video, thank you very much for it!
Not gonna lie, I turned this on in the background because I'm incredibly squeamish. I find the concept of visceral horror very interesting, but I can't watch it (to be specific, I find no enjoyment or catharsis, just discomfort and, in the worst cases, vivid nightmares). I can't watch medical dramas, boxing, or American football, either 😂 I just flinch repeatedly and look away.
I think that you are just a very healthy individual.
@@nhvkuy4675 haha hopefully! The peculiar thing is that when I was a young child, I was fascinated by horror. I'd always read the back of horror movies even though I never tried to rent any, and I loved shows like "Are You Afraid of the Dark" and books like the "Goosebumps" series. Then when I was 7, my baby sister was born with a serious health condition. She died 6 months later, and it was like a switch flipped in my head. Horror was a total no-go. (Around the same time I also stopped puking after riding in a car for even a few minutes and just got motion sick. This is also when I developed arachnophobia out of the blue. No idea if either of those are related, but it's an interesting coincidence.)
Once, Seth Brundle dreamed he was a fly, a fly buzzing around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Seth Brundle.
Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Seth Brundle. But he didn't know if he was Seth Brundle who had dreamt he was a fly, or a fly dreaming that he was Seth Brundle. Between Seth Brundle and the fly there must be some distinction! This is called the Fly, 1986, by David Cronenberg.
I love the use of Death Grips during the transition screens, excellent touch!
Watching this while being a very pregnant person gave me the same catharsis as watching some of my favorite horror movies. Thanks for the great essay. I always look forward to your work!
That Yuko comic with the snail was so terrifying, I gotta check it out. Reminds me of 'The Metamorphosis', brilliant video!
i love the thing the sheer mention of it makes me foam at the snout
the use of SOPHIE and death grips in this vid is chefs kiss
I could honestly listen to you talk movies all day. Not only do you have the most wonderful voice/way of speaking, you’ve got the most incredible and thought-provoking takes. I never really stopped to give body horror this kind of consideration because my knee-jerk reaction to the genre is “curl up in self defense and look away,” lol. But now I see that’s a response to be expected since body horror strikes a chord in everyone, whether we realize it or not. Thank you for this latest awesome video! ♥️
So, this has made me wonder, does Sophie's transformation into an old woman in Howl's Moving Castle qualify as mild body horror? It actually follows along with the thematics, suddenly being cursed into the form of an old woman (ruin), the process of adjusting to this, running away, realizing she's angry about being cursed (rebirth), coming to terms with herself, expressing her anger and discontent when she feels it instead of just bottling it up, since she feels like, well, she's an old woman now, why hold back (release). Of course, it's a fairy tale, so eventually the curse is broken. But sort of a moment with the mild body horror of aging.
Anyway, I enjoyed the video, body horror has never been a genre that appealed to me, but I do love good, intriguing thematics, and well, learning what the appeal is. Probably not going to take up body horror media tbh, but I have more of an appreciation for it now.
love the argument that watching horror movies is a form of meditation. I definitely think there's some truth to that in the sense that they force us to reflect on our thoughts, actions, and lives
I’ve been thinking about my attachment to this genre a lot lately. As my chronic illness has progressed and I’ve come to term with being incurable diseased, I have definitely found myself more fascinated with body horrro.
And thats on Kafka!
NBC Hannibal's crime scenes are my personal favorite examples of body horror, and I think that a lot of times body horror is about giving the viewers the impression "look at that miserable thing. I wish I could kill it just so it's suffering can come to an end" and in Hannibal, you get this gut-wrenching feeling even while looking at the corpses, the grotesque unalive 'works of art' as it's portrayed in the show.
As a horror writer and reader specifically who writes queer body horror, I really appreciate this video. So many people completely disregard it as artless
Slug Girl is a huge inspiration for me when reading through a trans perspective. Not only does she have her transformation but it also deals with the rejection by family.
I've long believed the fall of splatterpunk books sunk the opportunities of queer horror writers for decades
You put into words so perfectly why I love the body horror sub genre. I also love hearing you talk about Teeth. It’s so underrated.
Omg faceshopping!!! What a killer song choice. Always love Yhara's insightful videos
I honestly think that a good example of body horror is twilight breaking dawn part one. It's Like a monsters take on pregnancy and I think they captured the horror of it and the grotesque quite well.
I don't know why seeing this stuff in movies doesn't bother me. I almost immediately faint if a needle touches me. Psychology is weird. Great video!
body horror is one of my fav genres so I love seeing it treated w some respect and examination.. I was like YEAH LITERALLY when you were talking about The Stuff it was such a good premise but such a weak execution. I saw a showing of it at a film society where they had a food expert discuss the realities of like fda approval and contamination and such and what the stuff mightve been like more realistically and it was scarier than the film lol
Body horror is one of my favorite genres too. As someone who had surgery as a baby, and was gifted my mom's gallstones, it does feel cathartic and comforting.
Teeth are scary, put teeth on anything and it looks weird and creepy almost instantly.
There's reason why teeth are drawn very abstract or not at all in cartooning and graphic design.
Also, I've seen and enjoyed many of those movies, but I really like The Thing. I've seen it so many times and always enjoy the sense of paranoia in all the characters and how they act on it. I get to feel anxious and paranoid along with the characters, but it feels fun and intriguing instead of plain awful.
This is why I play a Tzimisce (body horror type vampires) in Vampire the Masquerade. My girl has lamprey tentacles sprouting between her legs because all her life she was being prepped to be breeding stock. She has a pretty strange worldview, like many of her kind. And her body's various modifications can and often do react to her emotional state. It's very cathartic for me to play her asI deal with a lot of my feelings on my body, my lllnesses, my sense of womanhood and insecurities by pretending to be her.
So I cant watch this cause body horror makes me FAINT so I'm leaving a comment so your video gets some kind of engagement! Love your videos! I'll tune in next time! :)
Yeah same. I tried to see how far I could get-not at all. I’m still feeling ill after the imagery around 1:45 or so.
@@anonymousfellow8879 I had to get stitches on my finger and I almost threw up anytime I had to look at them. I adore horror but body horror is the only thing I can't handle!
You could listen to it like a podcast!
I've recently took up a further interest in the genre, having gone through my own body horror experience last year. A severe health crisis led to my body becoming unrecognizable and I had to navigate feeling like a stranger in my own skin. I'm doing a lot better now, but I think these films are helping me process what happened and what could happen again, and how I can learn to exist within that framework. Wonderful video; keep up the good work!
As a 500 hour certified yoga teacher, with 140 extra hours of training in a kind of meditation technique called yoga nidra, who has loved body horror since I was too small of a child and saw the fly - I approve this message.
I think it is worth mentioning a rather insane game, that i feel does a very great job at capturing these themes, called “fear and hunger” (spoiler warning) at the end of the first game (in the ending A play through cause there are like 12 different endings) you and your party travel to the lowest part of the prison you are trapped within. Amongst your company is a young girl who you have protected throughout the game. Being your first party member, she is incredibly weak and fragile. When you arrive at the final depths she suddenly turns pale and begins a horrifying transformation (which act as the phases for the boss fight in each stage). As the companion you knew throughout the experience rapidly transforms into a new being, you can only survive its collateral attacks from this uncontrollable evolution before it is reborn as “the god of fear and hunger.” Its final act to you upon its metamorphosis is mercy, as it watches over you as you peacefully bleed to death. Telling you to rest, and take peace in the inevitable. Considering F&H is definitively the most difficult game i have ever played this moment was so shockingly cathartic and so different than the prior experience, and created a beautiful moment i still vividly remember. If you can stomach the subject material (which is admittedly highly disturbing) it’s a wonderful experience strongly recommend
As an autistic person, body horror has always helped me feel connected to others- I can draw a horrific, bloody image to help convey certain sensations with neurotypically functioning people. Those would involve teeth, eyes, but most importantly- skin. The sensation of your skin constantly on your body seeming so different from how others notice it...when I'm having sensory overload, often I resort to drawings with horrific imagery to best convey the internal sensation the external stimuli creates in me- so non autistic people can visualize the agony of the skin being ripped from your body, so they can understand how it feels when I have a panic attack in the grocery store- or having a parasite slipped into your baren spinal cord to simulate how a certain texture affects your body.
Love that youre talking about body horror! It's an under appreciated sub genre.
Any sort of horror is something I find really comforting as someone who has anxiety and OCD. It’s cathartic and comforting, I used to go to sleep while watching/listening to horror
Love this video. And it's not even Halloween.
Speaking of body horror, as a weeb, i tend to also think of alot of mature anime films like Akira, and parts of Paprika. Tho i dunno how thematically they tie to body horror as most of the films here do.
I think the most body horror anime i've seen is Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack, which i think is based on a Junji Ito story, tho I can't remember if that's real or not. Mainly with what's causing fish and sharks to attack people on land, which from what I remember scarred me from it's concept when it was finally revealed.
Also the more psychological aspects of horror from Black Swan i remember referenced alot of the anime film Perfect Blue, especially the bath scene.
It is in fact based on the Junji Ito manga Gyo, yeah.
I love your videos so much. I love how often you talk about horror movies(my fave genre) and I love *how* you speak about them and the reverence you give them through your essays. Horror movies are so easy to disregard and so often get brutalized by critics for having the audacity to show the ‘uglier’ side of existence. I love your content 💗
Thank you for talling about Teeth. I really enjoyed the film when I saw it but had all but forgotten about it until you mentioned it in an essay.
This is a "listen from another tab" kinda video, but damn if you're not always on point
I've always enjoyed body horror as a psychological story but it tends to cut straight to my lily liver. It's not the gore, it's not the uncanny, it's the deformity of your body, the betrayal of becoming a monster. Maybe because I have always been a fat person, and growing up my body didn't belong it me, it was the nightmare of others, it was an object of disgust and desire and none of that was mine. I've always been very neutral on my body.
Okay this video hit harder than I thought. I have tinnitus and there are some days where I just can’t help but wish to escape my own body. This video really resonated with that feeling. And it also gave me hope that maybe I can live with tinnitus and not crawl out of my skin.
Body horror has always freaked me out. It’s my least favorite genre of horror, but now I finally know why. Great video.
as an artist, I started drawing body horror around last year when roe was overturned. I got really bad anxiety about my own body, and how it could make my life hell if something dreadful were to happen. body horror has helped me feel more in control of how I present myself; for me, it’s a massive “fuck you” to the objectification of women by portraying my body how I feel in it, rather than how other people may see it. it’s honest and uncompromising, and I think there’s something beautiful about that.
Id be real curious how you'd respond to Julia Ducournau's work, she's about the closest thing we have to a spiritual successor to Cronenberg. Sapphic, extremely French Cronenberg
i love her work, *raw* was actually focal point of a video i did a couple of years back but unfortunately i still haven’t watched *titane*😳
a fav topic of mine AND a little but of SOPHIE in the soundtrack? i am beyond hyped for this video
This video is PERFECTION 😍 This so succinctly puts into words what I adore and find fascinating about body horror... plus, Ponyboy over the title card? The taste, IMPECCABLE 💖
Edit: oh my god i cant believe i mixed up my SOPHIE songs nooooo
honestly it happens to me too lol
I've never been afraid of horror movies. Even as a young girl. Horror was an escape from real life for me. Real life is what has always terrified me. Thank you for bringing up Nightmare on Elm Street 4. It's my favorite horror movie
By this standard, would Turning Red qualify as some kind of body horror lite movie?
This is one of the best video essay about this kind of topic I've ever seen on yt. Not only did it help with my screenwriting for the limited horror body tv series for my diploma, but also made me even more excited about body horror. Thank you so much, great editing, great opinion and arguments.
Can't watch this one because body horror triggers my trichophobia, even though I spent all of last week binging all of your videos end to end.
Still came through to drive that engagement though, must support my melanated creators.
Love everything you do Yhara.
There is a small and very interesting sect of buddhist monks that subject themselves regularly to watching incredibly gorey and disturbing videos as a form of meditation. The reasoning behind it is pretty complex so I won't get into it, but you can unknowingly stumble upon playlists made by someone with these beliefs on RUclips and they are suuuper fucking creepy. There's just chanting over the images of violence or rotting flesh.
I’ve never heard of this. What are these monks called, what are the playlists called?
I wonder these complex reasons why as well. I wonder if it is found to be helpful for those with disturbing intrusive images/ thoughts
@@JohnSmith-wi4xo it was in an east Asian language that I don't speak or read so I don't know what it's called. I can go find a video I remember mentioning and exploring it though.
Excellent editing, great choice of music, and thoughtful commentary.
I watched this video when it came out while not really watching any horror. And now after more than a year, I've watched most of the film mentioned in this and many more body horror and horror movies in general. I became so attached probably because my struggle with my own body and gender identity. I even made a sound art piece for my contemporary sound art class in college about body transformation (I kind of incorporate the three Rs structure in my piece actually).
So thank you for introducing me to probably my favorite film subgenre and making this, my favorite video essay. This also has like the best soundtrack for any video essay ever.
It's really interesting to hear what people love about this genre as someone who can't really watch it at all! Weird to note I have the opposite experience to a lot of people in the comments here who say they enjoy body horror because of chronic illness. I feel like after my experiences with chronic illness it's all too real to me and I want to avoid it as much as possible, otherwise it brings up a lot of trauma. I also have really high empathy so I struggle to watch anything where people are in pain, I have to hide behind my sofa cushions 😆
Ito is probably the best body horror artist ive ever seen
It's so wild when I see a Yhara zayd video and I'm like "I've really been into this lately!!!" This is like the 5th time this has happened 🤔
I do not mess with the premise of Tusk, so I will be throwing my phone down like reading smut in public if that stuff comes up for more than 10 seconds. Congrats for having the guts to focus on such a divisive topic
Finally, a realy good video analysis on my favorite horror subgenre!! Especially since I have a huuuuuuuge fascination of the art of transformation ^_^
This is... wow. You have a real skill. Managing to make me intrigued by body horror.
Also! The movie where she turns into a coachroach - have you read Kahfka’s Metamorphosis? I would be surprised if that movie wasn’t influenced by that work! Love your content!
i had never seen the roach transformation scene and now that you have shown it to me i am worse off for it
fiction is such a great avenue for talking about bodies. what makes it great about the body is it is immediate, it has a form, and it has limits. so seeing that form change, those limits be breached, and something as immediate as our bodies be warped is intriguing in itself. and no matter who we are and what material possessions we have, we can all be victim to something that affects and limits our bodies. and that's fucking cool to see how one deals with it.
on another note i love that you used sophie here, her music Fucks
Such carefully done and kindly presented video about body horror. Thank you, Yhara
This is one of the best video essays. Ive been a huge body horror fan for my whole life and found more and more that it represents beauty to me, an exploration and evolution into something unbound and yet still based on humanity. Im not being as eloquent as this video essay is, but I hope it made some bit of sense.
I must say that the music in this video was excellent.
coming back to this video again. Looking forward to your next upload
i hope you know i rewatch this video essay every two weeks to center myself and it’s so good
As an intersex person in my teenage years body horror was my outlet and the only genre I could relate to and saw my body and my confusion, fear and shame about it represented and seen. Now I'm in my 30s, love my intersex body so much but still love body horror just as much :') Great video, thank you sm!
The cockroach transformation is scary right up until its completion and then it becomes comedic (like a lot of Freddy film scenes). I suppose the terror of transformation itself is the horror - being trapped between two states - a successful transformation brings us to a stage of finality we can then deal.
hearing faceshopping play in the background made me so happy
When I watch scary videos I keep the comments up so I don’t feel alone
Another fantastic video! I really started getting into body horror in my early/mid 20's while spending 2 years working as a domestic care worker for elderly, physically disabled and mentally ill people. It was all pretty depressing but what really traumatised me was being young but having this intimate daily understanding what aging is like. Having the personality, thoughts, awareness, mental abilities and needs of your 25 year old self but having the agency of a new born baby, trapped in a prison of your very own flesh, the tools of your actualisation being indifferent and unresponsive to your will... But yeah because of this I felt very alone and isolated from most people so watching Body Horror was and still is really therapeutic. It's hard to describe but seeing these things portrayed so bluntly just goes to show that there's others out there with this understanding of the potential horrors of life. Seeing these biological things phrased as an external force speaks volumes about the human experience
The way in which I binged this whole channel in 2 days
You KNOW a video essay is going to he good if Faceshopping is one of the songs.
Oh, gosh. Time to drop everything to watch this!!
Body horror is one of those I will watch a bunch in a go and then not touch it again for years. Recently I've been slowly circling back to it as I've had to deal with the ripple effects of internal scar tissue and coming into my mid thirties. Its fuckin rough having a body that no longer works in ways it did before, does new things that hurt, and cuts you off in ways from what you were before. Watching this while half bed ridden was a uniquely interesting experince and has given me some new ways to look at it. Even without that, an absolute top notch video, thank you for your wonderful work!
Yeah, this is my absolute favorite horror subgenre.
One of the things it resonates along is my persistent backdrop of health anxiety which is tied to weird gender feelings and self-focused tokophobia all rolled into one.
I like the liminal spaces like the Release part of the genre too. Superficially because I'm biracial and nonbinary. But also have been through so much personal trauma (not going to get into that in your comments section) and just somehow... persisting. (So one of my favorite categories of monsters are the Undead - especially the process of Turning and perhaps accepting that new existence.)