Suitable
Flesh
2023
Director- Joe Lynch
Cast- Heather Graham, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Davidson,
Judah Lewis, Johnathon Schaech
Suitable Flesh is a loose adaptation
of H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Thing on the Doorstep.” I say “loose” because,
if you are familiar with Lovecraft, then you know that his stuff doesn’t
exactly lend itself to easy cinematic adaptation. First off, most of his work is
nearly a hundred years old and even in the 1930s his writing style was
archaic, seeming like something from a century earlier. Furthermore, his stories
often don’t present themselves in a sequential style needed for a movie. The stories
don’t have lots of characters with dialogue that move a plot along but rather rely
on a narrator’s description of events. The biggest reason that they don’t adapt
well to film is that movies are a visual medium and Lovecraft relies on ideas
that are inherently unfathomable, unimaginable or otherwise indescribable.
That said,
Lovecraft’s ideas are fertile grounds for endless exploration and have found
their way into hundreds of films either as cinematic adaptations or just as inspirations.
The Color Out of Space alone has been adapted to the screen at least four
different times.
Having
said all that, The Thing on the Doorstep is a bit more adaptation friendly as
it doesn’t involve interdimensional beings or cosmos spanning deities like some
of Lovecraft’s other stories. Without spoiling it too bad, the themes of The
Thing on the Doorstep are 1) mind control and 2) swapped genders, both of which
are psychological concepts and can be expressed without special effects.
Interestingly,
the idea of gender swapping probably seems a lot less shocking now (if its even
shocking at all now) than it would have been in the 1930s. On the other hand,
having your gender swapped involuntarily and repeatedly would probably be
pretty horrific, which leads us to another common Lovecraft theme; insanity.
The characters in his stories seem to be constantly on the verge of losing
their minds as each fresh new horror is loosed upon them.
Suitable
Flesh puts us even closer to insanity with its choice of characters. Heather
Graham is a psychiatrist who encounters a young man who she believes to be
schizophrenic (Judah Lewis the young protagonist from The Babysitter). She doesn’t
exactly practice a good work/ life balance and thoughts of her young patient become
an obsession coupled with sexual fantasies. Her confidant is her best friend
and fellow psychiatrist played by Barbara Crampton (with her own list of
Lovecraft credits including Re-Animator and From Beyond). Bruce Davidson (Lords of Salem) turns in a small but memorable supporting performance as her young
patient’s father. Since a central theme is mind control, all the actors get to try
on different personalities and at times the audience may not be sure of the motivations
of the characters which lends itself to the fear of impending insanity.
If your
only experience with Lovecraft on film are the Stuart Gordon movies like
Re-Animator and Dagon, Suitable Flesh is about as far from those as you can
get. This is largely psychological-body horror for the first two-thirds of the
film though the ending gets pretty brutal. Overall though, this is a low-key
movie that depends more on the audience’s empathy with the protagonist than on
visual scares.
If you are
hoping for a return to the gory-glory days of Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon, I’m
afraid that Suitable Flesh may leave you wanting. On the other hand, if you are
looking for a story that gets a little bit closer to Lovecraft’s intentions
than most other adaptations, then you need to check this film out.
