Hallo-Watch: Suitable Flesh (2023)

Watched:  10/18/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joe Lynch

Written by Dennis Paoli, who wrote Re-Animator, From Beyond, Bodysnatchers, and Castle Freak, which Stuart Gordon would film, Suitable Flesh (2023), directed by Joe Lynch, carries on the same tradition of adapting H.P. Lovecraft and creating a weird, off-kilter, occasionally hilarious horror film that was what I was looking for after a few Halloween horror movies had left me cold.

Heather Graham plays a psychiatrist associated with good ol' Miskatonic University who is in a padded room, speaking with her fellow doctor and friend, played by Barbara Crampton.  Graham relates the tale of how she was visited by a young man (Judah Lewis) who has found her as she wrote the book on out of body experiences.  And, boy howdy, is he, Asa, having them. He claims a man, his father who is not his father, is trying to steal his body.

Graham is taken by the young man, though she's married and has never strayed.  But there's some odd pull she feels, and soon goes to his house where she meets the father (Bruce Davison!), who is sick and dying, but cruel and mocks her.  

SPOILERS

Wouldn't you know it, the father's body is host to a mind that transfers around from host to host, and Graham is there the night the mind fully enters Asa's body (which she doesn't recognize, still believing him ill).  However, whatever pull Graham feels is oddly sexual in nature (there's that Dennis Paoli magic) and she has sex with Asa.  

Things go off the rails from here, with questions of who is in what body at any given time, and Graham trying to sort everything out.  And, unsure of what is happening, consults with her BFF, Barbara Crampton.

Things escalate.  I will say, this movie may have pioneered the first confirmed use of the back-up cam in a car dashboard showing us kills.  Slow clap, movie.

Yes, the movie is insane and absurd, and knowingly so.  And still written extremely tightly, closing all the loops of plot with some care.  It's amazing how easy this is to do at the script stage, but something doesn't happen along the way with so many horror films, including big movies.  

Heather Graham seems to be having a blast, so I hope that's true.  She's really a great choice for the lead, playing a few characters (SPOILERS).  And while Crampton gets less screentime, she's a delight in every scene.  

While not quite as out there as the Stuart Gordon directed films, it's in the same wheelhouse, mixing horror, comedy, sex and general Cthulian unknowable horrors.  And I feel like I'm back.

If the movie has anything to not recommend it, it has the look of a movie done on the cheap, which is a little surprising given they shelled out for Heather Graham, Bruce Davison and Crampton.  But if you're looking for *ideas* and a good time, you could do way worse.