Comrade Courant Culture Critic

The First Omen (2024): A Feminist Horror That Demands Bodily Autonomy “Not every miracle is divine—and not every institution deserves your trust.” — 4/5 Stars In the post-Roe era, horror has become a vital space for reckoning with the erosion of bodily autonomy. The First Omen (2024) doesn’t just participate in that conversation—it weaponizes it. This is not a haunted house story. It’s a procedural thriller about institutional gaslighting, reproductive control, and the quiet violence of faith used as a tool of patriarchal power. Set in 1971 Rome, the film follows Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free), a young American novitiate sent to the prestigious Mater Lachrymarum Convent to prove her devotion. But from the moment she arrives, something is wrong. The nuns are cold, the priests evasive, and the orphanage next door houses girls who vanish without explanation. When a series of “miracles” begin to unfold—...

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...