User Reviews

Warning: Spoilers

The gore, the horror, the claustrophobic atmosphere, the slow tempo of the whole movie is not the problem. It is the solution. I watched it a few days ago, and I can't say I wasn't left without scars, or without scares. Both. The gory moments have done their work and the slowness has done its, too. I spent a few days thinking about how this could metaphorically mean anything, and just this morning, it hit me. This movie can be a metaphor for the whole human person, and what happens to it if it doesn't think of the consequences of its actions. Blindly following what comes from the outside (presented as the guys entering the apartment) just shows a person unwilling to change her/s fate. Not asking for help is another symptom of this behavior. Bruises, than the blindness, is just what happens to a person not fighting the world. Not taking notice of the black spot on the wall (possibly signifying the danger) leads to nothing but death. And taking all of those entering the apartment with you is the point. Inevitably ending in complete decay in the end.

I loved Nekromantik, loved Der Todesking, and rolled my eyes at August Underground, but Thanatomorphose is hands down the most disgusting thing I have ever allowed to slither across my retina. It's full of flaws and I was about to turn it off after the first act, but then I started to "get" it and it's a pretty great underground effort.

Flaws first: script was God-awful. I would have liked this a lot more if it had either been in French or if I didn't understand English. Second, the acting was awful. Indie directors, if you're out there, listen to me: spend money on the actors. I'm telling you. You can fix anything in that frame except bad acting. God's honest truth. Also, I hated the score and the editing was weird in the first act. There were strange jumpy cuts through a lot of the scenes that didn't make any sense. Last, not all of the fantasy sequences really worked. Some of those could have been cut. I also would have cut the faux-artsy cinematography sequences as they serve no discernible purpose and it pulled me out of the moment.

All of those notes are fairly normal sins for underground horror. If you have a background in that kind of filmmaking those problems might not bother you as much as they would someone who is used to Hollywood-slick style.

All that being said, I think it's a solid movie. I read it as a metaphor for drug addiction. I think a case could be made for it being a metaphor for depression also. The main character is literally self-destructing, but her friends seem unwilling to help or unsure how to help. The hospital comes up more than once, and it is obvious that she should go, but with a person who has an addiction (or depression if you read it like that) friends often don't know what to do or how to help. She tries fixing it herself. She self-medicates. She literally places bandages on huge open wounds. She calls for help, but then lashes out at the person who comes to help her. She is listless and bound by inertia, but bizarrely industrious when it comes to nursing her illness (addiction). She's taking pills and jabbing herself with a needle, so I'm leaning toward addiction reference over depression.

So, if you decide to see it watch it with that in mind. If you're not a fan of underground indie horror stay far away.

To begin, the gore was awesome and I loved the special effects. I also really liked the candid filming style, it made the movie feel a lot more up-close and intimate. As a gory body horror movie alone, it was gross and entertaining.

The surface content of this movie is almost purely the main protagonist's physical deterioration. However, while watching Thanatomorphose I couldn't help but notice the parallels between depression and Laura's rotting body. The movie starts out by picturing Laura's unhealthy and abusive sex life. She is treated extremely roughly, and is even shown being forced and coerced into sex. She also loses her job, which could be a major source of stress. It's really clear early on that Laura is not happy. She loses almost all interest in her sculpting, something she seemed to have been passionate about before. As her condition worsens, she hungers more and more for sex to make her feel better. She grows so sick that she refuses to leave the apartment, and barely even gets out of bed. When Laura finally picks up her art again, she is seen pouring her pain and literal pieces of herself into her sculpt, a way of self-expressing. The final piece that convinced me that thanatomorphose is about mental health was the fact that she never saw a doctor. Despite her critical state, she refused any kind of medical care. Sometimes people with mental illness tend to invalidate their problems and the severity of them, so they instead refuse medical help and instead try to patch themselves up all alone.

I relate to Laura, which is why her symptoms were so obvious to me. To me, thanatomorphose is a reminder to take care of yourself.

I left this steaming pile of crap movie a 1 simply because there's nothing worse to rate it. If you enjoy watching average at best looking people running around naked, watching people perform the most mundane tasks imaginable such as shaving armpits and frying bacon then you're in luck. If I could get past the whole no dialog and lack luster effort put into this movie what I can't get past is the endless amount of every single bodily fluid, yes EVERY body fluid. Well there'd still be nothing to watch. I've never watched a movie where I almost vomited. Yes, no lie. I still feel like I might hurl. Epileptics might want to skip this too because there's a ton of stupid camera stuff he does that makes your eyes hurt. All in all I told my husband great job! You outdid yourself picking the worst movie I have seen in my 52 years of life. I actually couldn't wait for her to die so it would be over.

Look no further at this end of 2013 and into 2014 for great horror.

Act One: Despair.

Kicking off with a couple having sex, Thanatomorphose deals with a female who's body starts to fall apart. There is little dialogue, but the effectiveness of the claustrophobic shots are excellent with everyday scenes of life taking on a new twist. This is director Éric Falardeaus first movie so if there's more of this to come, count me in.

The bodily breakdown begins with a bruise and two fingernails falling out, with the use of nudity in the movie adding interesting reality to the proceedings. What looks like, a damp patch growing on the bedroom ceiling echoes the slowly decaying state of the girls body.

After a house party things start to progress, the girl wakes up being sick on her partner in the night. Her body now covered in bruises, he leaves her alone. Later a friend appears offering to take her to the hospital but she makes an advance resulting in her giving him oral sex. She's seen spitting out the semen, and as she stands up her excrement runs down her leg, obviously losing control of her bowels. She crawls to her bed where a dream scene commences with her seeing her partner cut pieces from her flesh and throw it to both males in her life who fight over it in a cage.

Act Two: Another

Next day she wakes up and goes to the bathroom to get herself ready for work. For a second I found this scene kinda moving, how she looks a mess, but still tries to continue being herself. It's obvious that something is physically wrong with her, but psychologically she's struggling with where her life is going too. She goes back to the bedroom, crying, and realizing she can't fix her face today sits on her bed, where we see her insert a finger into a hole in the back of her head.

The patch on the ceiling now is a big black, mildewed mass, and as she lies on the bed and scratches her vagina, we see blood run through the bedsheets. After another short sleep, and sunlight coming into the room, we're shown the temperature in her flat is over 30C (which in many ways confirms the nakedness). She then gets some ice cubes and throws them into a cold bath and climbs in to cool down (maggots seen crawling all over her body).

Afterwards, she brings out a sculpture she's been trying to finish, and as she presses into the clay one of her fingers breaks off and she tries to stick it back on again. She eventually puts the finger in a jar with some alcohol, taking a Polaroid picture and writing down the date of the dodgy digits demise. She then tries to superglue her fingernails back on and puts some stitches into her remaining fingers to make them last longer. It's a cut then to what happened to her boyfriend.

She's seen on the bed masturbating and flashbacks show her remembering how her boyfriend had come back to the house. He lets himself in, and finds her in the shower where, through the shower curtain, she asks him to touch her (trying to hide her condition) but he calls her a whore so she comes out and smashes him on the head, over and over, killing him. We then see that he's been lying in the kitchen for a while already, rotten, and covered in maggots too. During this process her arm breaks off so she has to stick it back on with duct tape, and a loose ear gets put in one of the alcohol jars. Shes then seen trying to remove her infestation of bodily maggots with a pair of tweezers. Flies buzz incessantly now in the background. At the end of this second act we get to see in shocking fashion her eyes are now milky cataracts as she stares creepily at the camera. This is a pretty effective shot.

Act Three: Oneself.

After a phonecall to the guy she gave oral sex to, he arrives at the flat to the stench all around him. He finds her black, and oozing on the bed where she asks him to have sex again "what, you don't find me attractive anymore?" (she asks shuffling to the door). He refuses saying she needs to go to the hospital, so she lunges at him stabbing him repeatedly, killing him. From here she goes back to her sculpture which falls to the floor breaking apart, her lungs wheeze as she screams in anger while a glass jar falls from the shelf, with one of her ears falling out, she reaches up in despair and jabs her thumbnails into her eyesockets puncturing both her eyeballs while dropping to the floor.

Her hair has now completely gone and she crawls along the floor, blind, squishy, squilchy, as those fly sounds get louder, louder, and LOUDER. She can crawl no further, stopping, her flesh drips and drops to the floor like strawberry jam. Her rib cage becomes exposed as her body tries to rise a final time, an ear piercing scream coming from her mouth as her lower jaw breaks off and falls to the ground. The camera pulls back as we see her final resting place in the bloodied hallway of her home now. The fly noise lowers to a hush...

Conclusion:

For a first directorial feature Thanatomorphose is extremely memorable and an awesome horror work. The vocal parts (of which there aren't many) could be a little tighter, but it pleases me no end that there are folks out there who aren't aiming for bums on seats in the brainwashed houses of multiplexes. Just as the music charts say nothing about good music, the cinema says nothing about good movies. Listen up!

How I first heard about this movie was on Facebook, from one of the many horror movie pages I like since I'm a huge horror fan. They advertised it and what caught me first of all was the cover. It reminds me so much of Death Metal album cover (which I'm also a fan of). But at the same time it shocked me in a way and I felt I had to find out more about it.

I then read the plot and I have to say it captivated me because I've never heard of something like this in a horror film before. So I then bought it on DVD from Amazon. I have just finished watching it and I have to say it was possibly one of the most effective films I have ever watched.

The story really works and the character development was very simple but good. One thing I would like to know is the character's names. I'm not sure why they weren't named

The acting was really good especially from Kayden Rose.

The cinematography was great. Slightly out of focus at times but not enough to annoy.

One of the best things I thought was the lighting.It really showed the bleakness of the scenes brilliantly and added a lot of subtly when showing Kaydon's character at her worst through her decay. It felt like the director was saying "you don't need to see the disgusting image all the time, but I would like you to imagine it" which made it just as effective.

The makeup was absolutely outstanding. I cannot believe how realistic it looks. Devil horns go up to the makeup artists.

So overall it was a good movie but I don't think I could watch it for a while. It was very uncomfortable to watch at times. The most disturbing scene was the end. I'm not going to spoil it anymore.

So horror fans, if you want to see it please do. But I warn not to eat before and during the film. Also it doesn't show a spec of happiness throughout, which is why I thought it was very bleak.

Mr Eric Falardeau, for your first major film, you did a great job. I hope to see you make more films in the future. You rock dude.