Tag: Body Horror

Control Freak (2025) | REVIEW

Kelly Marie Tran in CONTROL FREAK — PHOTO: DISNEY PLUS (Still image from trailers)

Directed by Shal Ngo — Screenplay by Shal Ngo.

Shal Ngo’s generically titled body horror flick Control Freak follows Valerie (played by Kelly Marie Tran), a motivational speaker, who, in her first scene, talks to her audience about rejecting and resisting the voice inside of your head that keeps you down. Valerie, who is struggling with a constant itch in her scalp, is quite popular, it seems, as she is getting ready to go on a tour of Asia. This world tour requires her to go find her birth certificate, which forces her to face her troubled family history. When she meets with her father, who fought in the Vietnam War and is now a Buddhist monk, she is told that the itch, as well as the frequent visions of both ants and a dark figure, is a direct result of a demonic parasite that will attach itself to a host and will continue to gnaw away at them until they’re all gone. Valerie initially refuses to believe her father, but when things start to escalate, she realizes she has to do something drastic. 

Continue reading “Control Freak (2025) | REVIEW” →

The Substance (2024) | REVIEW

Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkles in Coralie Fargeat’s THE SUBSTANCE — PHOTO: Mubi / Camera Film (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Coralie Fargeat — Screenplay by Coralie Fargeat.

For whatever reason, there is a recent trend in French cinema where rising female filmmakers are gravitating towards horror filmmaking to tell stories with plenty to say. Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Julia Ducournau is the best example of this, as her critically acclaimed oeuvre — consisting of Raw and Titane — is filled with sensationally good and attention-grabbing body horror films that in the case of Titane is so out there and distinctive that you can’t describe it without getting strange looks from the person you’re talking to about it. French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat — whose first film was the revenge thriller appropriately titled Revenge from 2017 — is following in her footsteps. Her sophomore effort was, similarly to Ducournau’s Titane, warmly received at the Cannes Film Festival. While Ducournau won the main award, Fargeat’s evocative and expressive body horror film The Substance earned her the festival’s prize for Best Screenplay. Like Raw and Titane when they were released, The Substance, which reportedly received a standing ovation at upwards of 9 minutes at its world premiere, is an excellent piece of genre filmmaking that is sure to be remembered as one of the best and most memorable films of the year.

Continue reading “The Substance (2024) | REVIEW” →