Suitable Flesh

 

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.