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...

Companion (2025): A Satirical Horror About the Men Who Think They’re Owed Love "Find someone made just for you." — 8/10 Stars Companion (2025) review: Drew Hancock’s sharp sci-fi horror opens with a woman pushing a grocery cart through a supermarket—calm, ordinary, eerily familiar. It’s a direct echo of The Stepford Wives , but this film isn’t about suburban conformity. It’s about something far more contemporary: the belief that intimacy can be purchased, loyalty programmed, and love automated—so long as you’re the kind of man who thinks he’s owed it. Josh (Jack Quaid) brings his new girlfriend, Iris (Sophie Thatcher), to a lakeside weekend with his closest friends: the sharp-tongued Kat (Megan Suri), the warm-hearted Eli (Harvey Guillén), his partner Patrick (Lukas Gage), and Kat’s mysterious, married lover Sergey (Rupert Friend). Iris is beautiful, attentive, and unnervingl...

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...