[DISCUSSION] [SPOILERS] - SUITABLE FLESH - Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Barbara Crampton

canthidium, 8 months ago

Well I gotta say I was really looking forward to this since it’s supposed to be a spiritual successor to Re-Animator and From Beyond, but I was extremely disappointed. It’s more weird 90s low budget softcore TV movie than 80s campy body horror. A lot of it had “filmed in the directors house” vibes, which is fine, but the acting is atrocious. I don’t know if they were going for that or not but it was distracting how bad it was. Heather Graham, who isn’t Meryl Streep by any means, but is usually pretty good, had the same expression and tone the entire movie. Even when she was “possessed” by the other entity. She sounded like she was reading off cue cards the whole time.

The premise was decent, based of a Lovecraft story, but I found it pretty boring. I was hoping having Barbara Crampton in it would be a highlight but she was just…there. I’m usually pretty forgiving about character actions in movies. I’m a big believer in that people don’t make smart decisions in stressful situations and can often do incredibly stupid things. That being said, no one in this movie acts like a human. They just go along with things when people wouldn’t and they argue against things that they can plainly see.

The biggest thing for me, and this is probably a very biased opinion because I am a staunch supporter of therapy and have been in different kinds of treatment for a long time, but the way Heather Graham’s character is shown as a psychiatrist was so behind the times and ridiculous that it just infuriated me. Early in the movie she meets a potential patient and talks to him for all of 5 minutes, then goes home and tells her husband all about him and give him a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder. She also hypnotizes a patient to try to help him overcome violent outbursts but she’s able to put him under in seconds and he gets stuck that way while she talks to another person and it’s just too over the top for me. I know the movie is supposed to be campy and silly at times but it just left a super bad taste in my mouth the way they portrayed psychiatry and therapy. But like I said my personal experiences are probably making me take it more personal than I should.

But overall it was pretty generic and disappointing and I wouldn’t recommend it. I really wanted to love it especially seeing it have such a high rotten tomatoes score and lots of critics loving it but it feels like another moment where I’m watching a different movie than everybody else watched.