Review of Thanatomorphose (2012) by Pamela D — 16 Mar 2014

THANATOMORPHOSE (2012) independent.

WRITTEN BY AND DIRECTED BY: Éric Falardeau.

FEATURING: Émile Beaudry, Eryka Cantieri, Roch-Denis Gagnon, Simon Laperrière, Pat Lemaire, Karine Picard, Kayden Rose, David Tousignant.

GENRE: HORROR.

TAGS: body metamorphosis, sodomy.

RATING: 6 PINTS OF BLOOD.

PLOT: In this low-key, avante-garde shocker, a young woman struggles to cope with a hemorrhagic flux which turns her into a living corpse.

COMMENTS: Wow! so disgusting! Thanatomorphose takes its title from a French word for visible post-mortem decay. In the film, Laura (Kayden Rose) is a slacker, wannabe artist who lives an otherwise quiet existence, accented by a few parties with her 20-something acquaintances, and rough sex with her misogynist boyfriend.

With no clear cause, Laura slowly succumbs to some dreadful, Ebola-like condition which begins with mysterious bruises. Before long, her fingernails come off, her teeth loosen, and she's upchucking and urinating blood. Inexplicably, (though perhaps a degree of mental derangement is a symptom of her mysterious malady) she resists seeking medical treatment.

Instead, Laura prefers to isolate herself in her tiny apartment as the disease runs it course. She's subject to frightful nightmares, visual disturbances and hallucinations. Laura's boyfriend and another suitor don't seem particularly alarmed by her transformation, choosing instead to take advantage of her as a sexual receptacle instead of rushing her to the emergency room.

Thanatomorphose's plot is nearly non-existent; we follow the course of Laura's collapse and her transformation into a living, rotting corpse. Laura bounces and jiggles about her apartment, usually full-frontally nude.

Laura makes eggs and bacon, Laura goes uses the toilet. Laura masturbates, even as her body is literally falling apart. Despite a storyline that is linear in the extreme, Thanatomorphose is captivating. The utterly bizarre nature of Laura's ordeal is so puzzling and out of this world that her metamorphosis into a still-animated cadaver, complete with squirming maggots, is somehow engrossing. Perhaps it's the film's direct, almost quietly pensive presentation. While much of what we see suggests ideas about our intimate relationships with our own bodies, those ideas must come from inside us, as the film makes little philosophical headway on these themes.

Thanatomorphose is reminiscent of efforts such as The Fly (1986), Contracted (2013, reviewed here several weeks ago) in which a woman is similarly devoured by a rotting disease. Thanatomorphose's morbid physiological theme also brings to mind to the artful French body disassociation film, Dans ma peau (aka In My Skin, 2002), in which a woman hallucinates disembodiment of her limbs as she slowly consumes herself, and to the necrophilia shocker, Deadgirl (2008) in which two teens discover an undead mental patient strapped to a gurney, and use her as a sex slave.

Thanatamorphose takes the horror of David Cronenberg style, gruesome body metamorphosis, isolates it, and distills it into the focal point of an entire film. Well executed claustrophobic cinematography, and the cloistered, dark interiors of Laura's tiny flat intimately draw us into her decadent odyssey. There's no humor, no camp, and no comic relief. While odd and experimental, Thanatamorphose more or less holds together and sustains itself. The filmmakers pull off their bare-bones premise with macabre style, good timing and editing, and some spectacularly gruesome makeup effects. The Ick! factor is through the roof on this one!