Suitable Flesh (2023) – Skin-Crawlingly Creepy

Released: 27th October
Seen: 24th December

In 2020 we lost the great Stuart Gordon, one of the gods of 80s horror. The man gave us such glorious works as Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak along with having a hand in classics like Honey I Shrunk The Kids. A lot of the work that made him an undeniable icon of the genre was his adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories and a lot of those films were written by Dennis Paoli who has screenwriting credit on five of Gordon’s films, those being Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, Castle Freak and The Pit And The Pendulum. It’s safe to say that a large number of the early films that gave us an idea of what a Stuart Gordon film could be wouldn’t exist in the same way without Dennis Paoli’s writing. So, the question is what would happen if you paid tribute to Stuart Gordon by getting Dennis to write another adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft film and let the director of Wrong Turn 2 handle the direction? Turns out, you get something that’s pretty fucking fun.

Suitable Flesh, an adaptation of The Thing On The Doorstep, starts by introducing us to Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham). Elizabeth is a psychiatrist who is having some marriage problems but in general, is managing to get through life when a strange young man named Asa (Judah Lewis) barrels into her office begging for help. At first, it sounds like Asa is living with an abusive father who ‘wants his body’ but then when Asa seemingly has a seizure in front of Elizabeth, he seemingly has a complete personality change. Turns out that Asa’s dad Ephraim (Bruce Davison) knows a ritual that allows him to switch bodies with people and after the third time it becomes permanent. He’s almost done with changing into Asa when his obsession changes, now he wants to be Elizabeth and will stop at nothing to make that transformation happen.

Suitable Flesh is about as close as you can get to a 90s Stuart Gordon horror film without it actually being a film made in the 90s by Stuart Gordon, it’s that damn good. Heavily borrowing a lot of the style and tone that made his movies iconic, Suitable Flesh is a throwback horror film that is aimed straight at a very specific audience that enjoyed finding the weird-looking horror film on the shelves of a Blockbuster and watching it at 1am when they weren’t supposed to be awake. This is a film made by someone from that specific generation and for people from that generation, and oh god is it everything you could want. It’s filthy, twisted, funny, bloody, and sexy and it jumps between all of those like the movie’s being possessed by different subgenres every few minutes.

It takes a while for the central possession idea to make sense, specifically to make it clear how it works and how to stop it but Suitable Flesh handles that in a few very fun and visually exciting ways. It’s not too simple, it does take a minute for it to make sense but once it does you’re free to have fun with this incredible cast doing some great work bouncing between personalities and delving into some fun twisted places. Heather Graham is particularly stunning, going from an awkward mousey psychiatrist to a twisted old man who is working out what his new female body can do. It’s a fascinating combination of horror and sex, which really helps sell that throwback 90s vibe. The other actors have to pull this off too, particularly Judah who gets several characters of his own to try on but it’s hard to ignore the powerhouse performance of Heather Graham.

Suitable Flesh also just nails the tone of those classic 90s films, the strange visuals that were common at the time work here. There are a lot of reference shots, including some falling shots that look straight out of Psycho or a bunch of strange rotating shots and transitions that give the film a sense of time. It’s all looking back, using shots that are almost unseen in most films made in the last decade to help unnerve the audience. A lot of modern audiences might not be used to some of these shots so it’s unsettling, older audiences remember seeing these on gloriously shitty VHS copies and it’s strangely comforting seeing them used again. It’s just fun seeing these classic visual tricks being used again and used well to elevate the story. A throwback is all well and good, nothing wrong with paying tribute to those who came before, but the real trick is figuring out how to pay tribute in a way that makes sense in the narrative and Suitable Flesh does that.

To cap everything off, Suitable Flesh is just downright disturbing at parts. When it wants to freak the audience out, it does so with gusto. It’s not afraid to get more than a little gritty at times, between all the dark twisted fun there’s a lot of pure horror to be found here. It’s a possession body horror film with a ton of sex, that’s basically the perfect movie right there. It’s obviously aimed at a very specific kind of horror fan, but it absolutely nails what it’s trying to do and it’s hard not to love a film that achieves its goals this well.

Suitable Flesh is suitably weird considering what it’s trying to be. It’s trying to be a throwback to a specific director’s classics and it manages to hit that target dead centre. It’s weird, it’s dark, it’s fun and it’s sexy in ways that only work in this specific mixture. It’s the kind of film that we flat out have not had in decades and probably would’ve never gotten again since we lost Stuart Gordon so the fact someone decided to go out and make another film that belongs right beside some of his classics is a miracle. Again, if you do not already enjoy Stuart Gordon films then Suitable Flesh will do nothing for you but if you’re already a fan of that specific kind of film, congrats on getting another film to enjoy.