Summary Extreme visuals in body horror movies push boundaries, leaving audiences horrified and nauseated. Filmmakers use practical effects or CGI to create nightmarish transformations and gruesome scenes. From maggot births to twisted dances, body horror films go beyond gore to disturb viewers to their core.
Contains graphic depictions of violence.
Horror movies that specialize in body horror tend to take things to the extreme when it comes to disturbing visuals, resulting in some of the most nauseating scenes in cinema history. "Body horror" refers to any subgenre of horror that focuses on extreme changes to the human form, be it through extreme mutilation, mutation, disease, or other unnatural elements. The scariest body horror movies don't just toe the line of going "too far", but instead merrily skip over it, taking audiences to the limits of human sensation.
There are several ways various filmmakers have gone above and beyond the average human tolerance for gore and extreme changes to typical anatomy. Directors like the infamous David Cronenberg are well known for using practical effects to achieve nightmarish visuals even in surprisingly old films, making body horror a genre that's lasted through the ages. More recent films have instead taken advantage of modern advances in computer generated imagery to achieve their own nauseating body horror spectacles.
10 Maggot Birth The Fly (1986)
David Cronenberg's remake of the classic creature feature The Fly is arguably his most iconic film. Whereas the original offered the hilarious visuals of Vincent Price observing a high-pitched fly with a man's head being eaten by a spider, Cronenberg upped the ante with gruesome depictions of Jeff Goldblum's flesh sloughing off a disgusting insectoid body. But The Fly doesn't stop there, becoming even more disgusting with the birth of transformed Brundle and Ronnie's "child".
In a nightmare sequence, Brundle's romantic partner Ronnie imagines the natural progression of her pregnancy with Brundle's child. In a hospital setting, Ronnie shrieks as she gives birth to a writhing, wriggling maggot of massive proportions, stumping the doctors around her. The screams of her pain and horrifying sounds of the larva as it worms its way out of her may imply that she wouldn't have survived the experience. Even if it is a dream, this moment stands out as particularly disturbing.
9 The Eye Splinter Scene Zombi 2 (1979) Zombies may be an all-too-common subject matter for horror films, but the scariest zombies in movies all have some elements of body horror to them that can still shock and disturb. Enter 1979's simply-named Zombi 2, a classic tale of the walking dead that knew how to keep its tired premise terrifying. A spiritual successor to legendary zombie director George A. Romero's previous Dawn of the Dead, Zombi 2 takes place on a Caribbean island, on which a voodoo curse has awakened the undead.
In one of the film's earliest and most gruesome deaths, a doctor's wife who had been studying the reanimated corpses is besieged by a zombie while alone in her house. Though she's able to bar it from entering, the creature is able to reach in and grab the poor woman by the hair, slowly impaling her eye on a jagged splinter of wood. From the actress' screams to the slow stabbing of the nasty shard of wood directly into her eye that's all shown in loving detail, this moment is a particularly hard beat to swallow.
8 The Hacksaw Scene Terrifier (2016)
In a world full of increasingly subtle horror movies that rely on a slow build-up of dread rather than a harsh procession of haunting imagery, Terrifier is a refreshingly simple slasher. The movie, which kicked off a franchise of sequels, introduces the murderous Art the Clown, returning from the 2013 horror anthology film All Hallows Eve. In his solo film debut, Art tears through scores of victims in ways that would make even the most hardened horror veteran squeamish.
By far the most controversial and nauseating scene in Terrifier is the infamous hacksaw kill. Here, after suspending one of his victims upside-down, Art mercilessly saws into her, slowly splitting her in half from groin to head, making another terrified victim watch all the while. With a miniscule budget, Terrifier manages to concoct one of the most viscerally evil and unpleasant scenes in recent horror memory, deserving of both praise and revulsion.
7 The Bloody Kiss Evil Dead (2013)
The Evil Dead series is famous for its ludicrously over-the-top gore, with explosively bloody setpieces bearing almost more resemblance to the slapstick violence of Tom & Jerry than a horror movie. However, the 2013 re-make stands out for its renewed focus on getting modern audiences squirming in their seats, and manages to do so with the appalling "Bloody Kiss" scene. Like most Evil Dead films, the movie centers around the awakening of the titular malevolent spirits which possess the bodies of their victims.
What makes the Evil Dead's demons stand out from most other horror movie malefactors is the insult they add to injury, going the extra mile to taunt and frighten their victims by verbally abusing them or even mutilating themselves just to prove a point. The remake's demon does the latter when possessing Mia, slowly slicing her own tongue in half with an old box cutter before violently locking lips with its next victim. Somehow, this action is harder to watch than other more explosive moments of gore in the same film.
6 Gabriel's Transformation Maglinant (2021)
An incredibly unique and creative horror film, the very existence of Malignant's villain is a cringe-inducing body horror moment in its own right. The film follows Madison, a woman trapped in an abusive relationship who was adopted at eight years old with no memories of her previous life. Madison begins experiencing intense hallucinations that seem to coincide with the actions of a depraved killer, quickly making her a suspect in the murder investigations.
It turns out that the real culprit behind both Madison's hallucinations and the killings is an entity known as Gabriel, an "evil twin" that Madison absorbed in the womb only to be trapped within her own mind. The scene in which Gabriel emerges in plain sight, bloodily clawing his way out of the plates of her skull to take control of her backwards body is one of the most spectacularly disturbing moments ever created by visionary horror director James Wan. Maglignant proved that body horror was alive and healthy in modern filmmaking.
5 Olga's Twisted Dance Suspiria (2018)
A re-make of the Italian "giallo" horror film of the same name, 2018's Suspiria conjures up fears both subtle and blatant with an impressive mostly-female cast. Like its predecessor, the plot revolves around a ballet academy secretly run by a cabal of witches, who use their students to their own grisly ends. Having enough of the enigmatic Madame Blanc's antics, Soviet student Olga goes to leave the school in indignation, only to find herself trapped in a ballet studio lined with mirrors.
Here, thanks to dark magic, the dancing of the other students inadvertently causes Olga to mirror their movements with violently contorted movements, twisting herself into a bone-breaking human pretzel while roaring in terror. To make the scene even more dark, Olga cries and urinates herself due to the pain, her fellow students being none the wiser to her absence just down the hall. This starkly uncomfortable and realistic reaction to such a tortuous death is difficult to watch by any metric.
4 The Drill Scene Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
While Tetsuo: The Iron Man might not be the most well-known body horror film, the Japanese-made movie outclasses many of its western counterparts when it comes to depicting graphic transformation sequences. The simplistic but feverish story posits a nebbish protagonist, simply referred to as the salaryman, who flees from the scene of an accident after hitting a man obsessed with making himself into metal with his car. Soon, the salaryman begins undergoing his own transformation into a horrifying steel monstrosity.
Of course, the zenith of his violent transformation occurs when the salaryman attempts to make love to his girlfriend, only to find his relevant body-parts turned into a vicious-looking spinning drill. The resulting chaos sees his girlfriend brutally impaled with the razor-sharp implement, killed in the throes of passion. What makes this scene even more disturbing is the questionable amount of consent the salaryman's girlfriend has in her own death, seemingly welcoming such a gory fate at the hands of her metallic lover.
3 Wallace Becomes A Walrus Tusk (2014)
An unusual horror endeavor by comedy guru Kevin Smith, Tusk's very premise is steeped in uncomfortable body horror that is by no means easy viewing. The story centers around a selfish podcast host named Wallace who runs a show based on interviewing eccentric people. While interviewing a strange seafarer who claims to have been rescued at sea by a walrus, Wallace is kidnapped by his subject, only to slowly be transformed into a walrus himself.
The apex of Tusk's body horror is the moment in which Wallace's new blubbery form is fully unveiled, fashioned from the misused body parts of other victims. His inhuman wails make for a haunting auditory experience to go along with the horrendous visuals, made all the more nauseating by the realization that Wallace is wearing the sharpened shinbone of his own decapitated leg as a tusk. Even if Tusk sounds silly on-paper, its execution makes for an unforgettable body horror achievement.
2 Marcy Shaves Her Leg Cabin Fever (2002)
Not every memorably horrific body-horror scene is necessarily the result of straightforward mutilation. Cabin Fever examines the effects intense disease can have on the fragile human form, going to great lengths to depict a type of gore motivated primarily by rot and decay. The film follows a group of college friends whose vacation in, what else, a remote cabin turns to ruin when they're exposed to a deadly flesh-eating virus. The anxiety of who is and isn't infected drives much of the suspense, only to pay off with gruesome body horror catastrophes.
One such event occurs when one cabin-goer, Marcy, shaves her legs after being infected. While her razor glides over her skin, foamy shaving cream is peeled back to reveal nothing but sloughing flesh and boils, unearthing the fact that Marcy has been infected by the virus to the degree that even the simple motion of shaving her legs is enough to peel her weakened skin. As if that isn't enough, she runs outside in terror only to be eaten by a rabid infected dog.
1 The Quadruple Birth Scene Men (2022)
From the mind of critically-acclaimed director Alex Garland came the formation of Men, a folk horror tale with feminist themes and a darkly disturbing plot. Yet Men is also unafraid to wade in the trenches of body horror as well, as evidenced by its bombastic climax. The movie tells the story of a recently-divorced woman who seeks to find peace while going on a solo vacation in a quaint English town, only to be terrorized by a series of men who all seem to bear the same face.
In the maddening ending of Men, the film's final girl is confronted with one of her titular tormentors, only for him to violently give birth to one of his many doppelgängers. This process continues as the men spew forth each other like Russian nesting dolls, leaving behind broken, bloated bodies at much to the dismay of the protagonist's fraying sanity. If there's one recent film that presents hard body horror to stomach, it's Alex Garland's Men.
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