Comrade Courant Culture Critic

The Substance (2024): Body Horror as Capitalist Self-Cannibalism “Audaciously gross, wickedly clever, and possibly Demi Moore’s finest hour.” — 4/5 Stars In a world that demands women consume themselves to stay relevant, The Substance literalizes the metaphor with grotesque, operatic precision. Coralie Fargeat’s audacious body-horror epic isn’t about aging—it’s about the capitalist machinery that turns self-optimization into self-annihilation. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading aerobics icon fired on her 50th birthday for being “too old.” Desperate, she injects a black-market serum that splits her body in two: out of her back emerges Sue (Margaret Qualley), a younger, hotter, more marketable version of herself. For seven days, they alternate consciousness. But the system demands sacrifice—and the original body pays the price. The Horror of Self-Commodifi...

Possession (1981): A Shattering Descent into Marital Horror and Existential Chaos "Not a film about possession—but about the horror of loving someone who’s become a stranger." — 4/5 Stars Let’s be clear from the outset: Possession (1981) is not a conventional horror film. It is a psychological exorcism disguised as a marital drama—a raw, unhinged, and deeply personal vision of love’s disintegration, filtered through the lens of Cold War paranoia, religious guilt, and body horror so visceral it borders on the sacred. Directed by Andrzej Żuławski during his exile from communist Poland, the film channels his own divorce, political disillusionment, and existential dread into a work that feels less like cinema and more like a scream carved into celluloid. The story begins simply: Mark (Sam Neill), a spy returning to West Berlin, finds his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) distant, erra...

A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020) A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020) What's more punk rock than getting your arm hacked off and replaced with a rivet-shooting axe by a cult of junkyard freaks? On paper, Spare Parts should play like a scratched-up VHS discovered at a squat party — a bloody, DIY manifesto against good taste. In practice, it's more like a band with all the right influences but no distinct sound. Ambitiously grimy, knowingly trashy, but leaving its best riffs on the cutting-room floor. Short-Ass Summary Directed by Andrew Thomas Hunt, this Canadian flick follows Ms. 45, an all-girl punk band touring through hell—or, at least, the worst parts of America. After a setup ripped from a seventies revenge thriller, they're captured by a cult led by a wannabe Caesar (the great Julian Richings) and forced into gladiatorial games. The ticket price? Their fucking limbs, swapped for cr...

Crimes of the Future(2022): Cronenberg Returns with a Visceral Vision of Human Evolution "A chilling, visually audacious provocation that lingers long after the credits roll—just maybe not in the way you’d want it to." — 4/5 Stars For devotees of cerebral body horror and those unafraid to stare into the abyss of biological obsolescence, Crimes of the Future is a singular, unforgettable experience—grotesque, brilliant, and defiantly Cronenbergian. Let’s be clear: if the words “written and directed by David Cronenberg” don’t make your stomach flutter with a mix of dread and anticipation, you haven’t been paying attention. With Crimes of the Future (2022)—a film that shares only its title with Cronenberg’s obscure 1970 debut of the same name (the two are completely unrelated)—the legendary auteur returns to his roots with a slow-burning, surgically precise meditation on art, mutation...