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Suitable Flesh is a 2023 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s tale The Thing on the Doorstep of a body-swapping wizard and the pair of friends entangled in the madness.

Shudder Films

Scriptwriter Dennis Paoli has gender swapped the leads roles with Heather Graham playing Dr Elizabeth Derby, a psychiatrist who through a troubled patient, Asa Waite (Judah Lewis) comes to the wizard’s attentions and Barbara Crampton playing Elizbeth’s best friend and fellow psychiatrist Dr Daniella ‘Dani’ Upton. Directed by Joe Lynch in a manner to recall the bonkers insane cinema of Stuart Gordon Suitable Flesh ultimately fails both as a horror film in its own right and as a pastiche to Gordon’s movies of the 80’s.

The script’s greatest weakness, and it has more than one, is that the story is told from the wrong Point of View. Centered on Graham’s Dr Derby the story is flat because Elizabeth is a reactive character, responding to events around her and not driven the narrative forward. Dr. Upton would have been a far better choice for the film’s point of view as she would have had a mystery to solve, a fantastic truth to uncover, and a dear friend to save. The second largest mistake is telling the story though the device of a flashback. The framing of a film as a flashback can be a powerful tool see Double Indemnity as an example, but it required a skill beyond Paoli’s current talents, draining the movie of all tension and suspense.

In addition to the weakness of the script, and I did not list all the ways I thought the writing needed further works, the film is hampered by lackluster performances. With the exception of Barbara Crampton and Judah Lewis every actor feels as though they were simply sleepwalking through their parts, presently nothing that felt like real live-in characters. The flat performances ultimately undercut the attempt to pay homage to Stuart Gordon’s films such as Reanimator where the actor give grand expansive presentations of arch characters.

While I had looked forward to this movie arriving on streaming for months, Suitable Flesh, screening on Shudder proved to be a disappointment.