...for this viewer, one of his fervored favorite horror sub-genres, are films having to do with gradual and involuntary change. Mind you, not the normal, complacent and wholly accepted kind of change, which we as a human species, mature through, in the various stages of our lives. Nor the degradative and erosive effect of known disease...the undesirable cancers, tumors, stunted growths and cellular shifts, which often plague the human condition. No siree, we're talking the kind of change that culminates into something well out of the norm...unearthly, even monstrous, for lack of a better term. Reckless and unorthodox scientific self-experimentation. Contamination of one's system. Genetic mutation. Viral transmission. Bodily invasion or possession. Or even simply, through a bite from something...or perhaps, some
thing. You feel the gradual change...you see the change...you even try to fight the change, if it's within your capability; however, time after time, in films of this horrific ilk, one eventually grows weary of the fight, and accepts the change...embracing it...surrendering to it's invasive purpose...even adapting one's mindset, to parallel with the progressive, ensuing, relentless and inevitable ugliness of what the body is becoming. In a way, it's almost a sensual thing...even erotic, in a rather skewed and twisted way. But what if the change is instigated from within...not willingly, per say, but on a deep, subconscious level, compelling one's outer form to change into, and conform with what & how the person truly is and feels, inside??...
...Laura, a young and aspiring sculptor, has forsaken her ability to be happy with anything; over her head, in a quagmire of seemingly inescapable depression, she has quite literally lost the ability to feel anything. Her artistic work has shorn itself of any inspiration...her relationship with her so-called boyfriend, violently sexual as it is, is nothing more than a numbing, bruise-instilling one-way transaction, which she receives nothing...not even sexual satisfaction. Her landlord, relentlessly demandant of the long-overdue rent owed him, proposes his own perverse sexual advances, in trade. Her apartment...dark, dingy and claustrophobic...seems to be closing in on her. Laura feels quite literally dead, inside...
...one evening, when her frustrated boyfriend has had as much 'fill' as he is able, and leaves, Laura tends to her bruised and battered body...except that those bruises...well, they just don't seem to be healing; in fact, after a period of days, not only do the blackened bruises seem to be spreading all over her body, but they are also becoming seeping, festering sores...hair and fingernails, bloodily torn away and discarded...the flesh, rotting away and falling off. At first, intrigued...like some sort of science project...then, repulsed and defiant...and finally, wholly accepting of what is happening to her, Laura stumblingly carries on, tending to her progressively eroding form...repeatedly taping and bandaging her exposed flesh, softening skeletal structure and disjointing limbs...embracing this new, albeit degradative existence...even finding some measure of self-rendered sexual satisfaction, at one point. When her boyfriend, as well as her landlord...disgusted at what she has allowed herself to become...repeatedly attempt to 'reconnect' with her, and intervene into her 'new life'...well, Laura just ain't having any of that, and finds that she must take steps...drastic steps, to purge the interlopers from the hellish world of de-evolution, which she has ardently embraced...
...as much one might be intrigued by the arcane dramatics, described herein...and as much as this viewer has clearly attempted to blunt the razor-edged intensity of what actually occurs, in the midst of these horrific proceedings, "Thanatomorphose" (...a French term, meaning 'the decomposition of a live organism') is most assuredly, a shocking, unnerving and disturbing piece of work. And yet, providing one can get past the over-the-top drippy, gooey and putrid ugliness of what is happening, the dramatics and the characterizations...especially actress Kayden Rose, as Laura...burst through. Rose's extraordinary performance...the presence of which is relegated to her being pretty much nude, for the better portion of the film...is as compelling, as it is repulsive and stomach-churning; as a viewer, you'll want to look away in revulsion, but cannot resist looking further. An outrageously and frightfully convincing performance, with a certain irony about it, in that the Laura character, as depressed and lifeless as she had become, seems to find a renewed sense of life and purpose, in dealing with what is happening to her...even as her body progressively breaks down and rots away...
...director Eric Falardeau clearly instills a most uncomfortably dark, slimy and claustrophobic aura, in these proceedings; as we watch Laura's grotesque bodily degradation, her surroundings...clearly a matter of 'well, I'm rotting, so housework is not even an option, anymore'...take on an equally grotesque ugliness...almost seemingly becoming a torturous dungeon, than a place of comfortable dwelling. And...not to necessarily beat a dead horse, here...one just
can't say enough about the drippy and juicy special effects and make-up, rendered herein...the intensity of which would
most assuredly unnerve even the most ardent and jaded gorehound...
...this is
not the type of film, where one walks away, having quickly assumed an immediate like or dislike of the film; by far, "Thanatomorphose" is
not a dissatisfying viewing experience, and
will fester in the mind, for quite some time. However, to emerge relatively unscathed by the film, and say, "...yeah, I
liked it..."...well, most might not feel too comfortable with
that conclusion, as well. Let's just say that, going into this film...what's that old saying?? "...forewarned,
is forearmed??"...
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