‘Suitable Flesh’ Just Gave Us One of Horror Movies’ Coolest New Kill Scenes
When the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration mandated standard inclusion of rear backup cameras in automobiles made after May 2018, the bureaucrats in charge had safety at the top of mind. Innovation in the art of the kill, one of horror cinema’s most cherished mores, probably didn’t factor into the agency’s decision. But five years after the fact, Joe Lynch figured out how this stock feature in today’s cars could facilitate good old-fashioned carnage in his latest movie, Suitable Flesh, with a bloody death scene that melds dark comedy to horror’s core entertainment, all while buttressing character detail.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
The film is a body-swap tale adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Suitable Flesh concerns Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham), a psychiatrist confronted by a troubled young patient named Asa (Judah Lewis), whose claims of possession are interpreted as evidence of a severe personality disorder. But as Asa insistently pushes, and then breaks, the boundaries of a respectable doctor-patient relationship, Elizabeth comes to realize the kid’s telling the truth: His crusty wretch of a father, Ephraim (Bruce Davison), really is trying to shanghai Asa’s body, like eminent domain by way of black magic.
Once Elizabeth involves herself in Asa’s plight, Ephraim decides he’d rather take her body instead. What transpires before, after, and in between this ghastly turn of events consists of satisfyingly grungy exploitation, with semi-gratuitous boob shots, entirely gratuitous killin’, and paranoiac surrealism. All this plot is all overlaid by Graham’s narration, which is recounted, Sunset Boulevard-style, to Barbara Crampton, who plays Elizabeth’s colleague and mentor, Daniella. If a pervy codger like Ephraim—if in fact it’s Ephraim at all, and not, say, an ancient eldritch entity—stepped into the body of a woman like Elizabeth, what else would he do aside from revel in her femininity? (It must be said: Elizabeth is a stone-cold fox.) Watching Lynch play with the male gaze filtered through the female gaze is a nasty, feel-bad hoot, the kind of creative decision folks unfamiliar with French structuralism will decry as “problematic”; these unsavory bits, of course, are part of Suitable Flesh’s point and pleasure.
So is Elizabeth’s weapon of choice in disposing of Asa once he’s fully possessed by Ephraim, or whatever it is that happened to possess Ephraim first. Asa-Ephraim corners Elizabeth in her office; he regales her with a bit of backstory and, demonstrating progressiveness uncharacteristic of a devil, writes off gender norms as “semantics.” It’s a prototypical villain build-up to the execution of their master plan, in this case a permanent takeover of Elizabeth’s body. Elizabeth has no such plan, but she does have good improvising skills, and distracts Asa-Ephraim long enough to stab him in the face, chuck him out a window, hoof it to her car, and back right over him–once, twice, three times; lather, rinse, repeat.
Lynch pushes the sequence to its limit, visually as well as aurally. He punctuates each forward-reverse movement with suggestive wetness, the sound of Asa-Ephraim’s flesh unsticking from the bumper of Elizabeth’s SUV. It’s a nauseating delight. But the scene’s best flourish is the camera placement inside the car, where Graham twists her face into a wrath-mask, gritting her teeth every time she accelerates backward, then whips her head around, hyperventilating in abject terror, when she drives away from Asa-Ephraim’s gory, crumpled form. The dilemma here is whether to watch Graham’s performance or the backup camera, though given that Graham’s spent the last hour and 15 minutes turning out her best work in years, you should look at the backup camera instead.
Director Joe Lynch on set.
Suitable Flesh finds refreshing innovation in a blueprint borrowed from bygone periods, like 1980s horror films and Lovecraft’s library. The film could even be called “old school.” But Lynch avoids the pitfall most ’80s-inspired horror movies blunder into—empty nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake—by taking modern conveniences into account among his arsenal for orchestrating bodily annihilation. Suitable Flesh is washed with the texture of the decade’s horror cinema while belonging entirely to its moment; the set design, the sleaze, the close-up, and often gleeful violence. But Lynch understands the difference between borrowing from horror’s past eras and playing dress-up, and he firmly roots that understanding in his well-executed kill sequences. Gorehounds may find the movie light on arterial spray. Regardless, when Lynch decides to spill viscera, he spills buckets, while holding focus on his characters and staying in the present.
‘Suitable Flesh’: Heather Graham Finally Gets the Trippy of Her Career
Elizabeth is a listener and a caregiver. Prescriptions and hypnosis are the tools of her trade. Her brutal burst of fury against Asa-Ephraim comes out of what looks like nowhere. By this time in Suitable Flesh, Elizabeth has already had her autonomy stolen from her by the entity twice; she’s past the point of desperation. A knife to the head isn’t enough to stop Asa-Ephraim. A stories-high drop onto unforgiving parking lot pavement isn’t enough. Even Elizabeth’s reckless driving isn’t enough, because the film keeps going even after she’s ground Asa-Ephraim into paste, but it does the job of underscoring how far the experience has pushed her. She’s practically animalistic.
At the same time, she’s clearly freaking out. Graham’s performance here dramatizes the film’s body swap motif. She’s practically playing two people at the same time: Elizabeth enraged and Elizabeth panic-stricken. The view Suitable Flesh gives audiences of its lead is as startling as the view it gives of Asa-Ephraim’s vehicular drubbing is new. We use rear backup cameras as risk reduction; they’re an extra guardrail to prevent drivers from crushing pedestrians under our tires. Lynch reimagines the technology as akin to a missile guidance system, going the complete opposite direction of its intended purpose. His choice reveals Elizabeth’s state of mind, something to the effect of “safety last,” as a secondary perk. But the greater achievement in Suitable Flesh’s ingenuity lies in giving horror movies and their audiences a whole new way to view a kill.
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