Spooky Season 2023: Suitable Flesh Review

Suitable Flesh is the latest H.P. Lovecraft short story to be adapted into a feature film and comes from director Joe Lynch, who is no stranger to the horror genre. The story sees psychiatrist Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham) become obsessed with helping young patient Asa Waite (Judah Lewis) who is suffering from extreme personality disorder. After going to the young man’s house to help and witnessing several strange occurrences, Elizbeth finds herself into dark occult danger as she tries to escape a horrific fate that seems to want to take over her body. The film is a good old gory time and a nice October surprise that should’ve made a lot more noise out of its runs at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival where it premiered and Fantastic Fest.

Just off the premise, one can probably tell that they are in for an insane watch and luckily, Suitable Flesh is every bit as crazy, unhinged, and wild as it’s premise would suggest. The film also makes for a great throwback to 80’s horror particularly the work of Stuart Gordon with Re-Animator clearly being a big influence. The film is essentially as story of two halves and the first half does a good job at setting up what’s to come. Its purpose is to get audiences invested in the story and characters and understanding the world. Graham’s Elizabeth, in particular, is very easy to sympathize with despite her obvious faults. While the film is easy enough to follow, it often leaves audiences in the dark and forces them to piece things together before it reveals what is ultimately going on.

From there, the film eventually switches gears and unleashes all kinds of chaos and bloody violence. The second half compliments the first half nicely and does a great job at showing what’s happening, rather than just telling audiences in an expositional manner like most studio horror films would. Technically a body swap movie, it delivers such a unique, campy, and morbidly humorous entry into the subgenre that truly stands out. Meanwhile, its body horror elements that come into play don’t disappoint in the slightest and utilize some gnarly practical gore effects that will leave an impact.

Ultimately, a large reason the film works as well as it does is because of Graham’s lead performance and how much she commits to the insanity, resulting in one of her best performances in years. Playing two completely different sides of the same character, she does such a great job at both. Using varying facial expression and mannerisms alone to set both sides of Elizabeth apart is quite the feat. Lewis has the similar challenge of playing two totally different versions of Asa and also performs admirably. However, he isn’t given as much scenery chewing moments as Graham but despite that, he holds his own alongside Graham. Finally, it is great seeing Barbara Crampton onscreen again and its nice to see her character, Dr. Daniella Upton, grow in size and importance over the course of the film.

That being said, there are some small flaws that hold the film back from reaching greatness but luckily, they are more nitpicks than anything. Its format has been done to death and although it can be effective, once reaching that moment in the film it just comes off as such an odd place to start and tell the story from there when it could’ve been told in more of a linear and straightforward fashion. While the first act does a good job at setting the stage, it may be a little too slow for some and take a bit too long to get going. There are definitely some unanswered questions by the end and while that may be the point for some, it will leave others cold.

In the end, Suitable Flesh is a perfect Halloween release and a fun watch for horror fans. It’s already been announced that it’ll be releasing on Shudder in January 2024 but if the film seems like something one would enjoy than it’s absolutely worth the rental on most VOD platforms.

still courtesy of AMP and Eyevox

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/