10 Body Horror Movies That'll Make You Squirm

In many films, body horror is used to physically represent a character’s mental decline. In the case of Black Swan, that decline is terrifying to behold.

The 2010 film stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis and is directed by Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky was inspired by the idea of doppelgangers for his script. In fact, the original idea was a screenplay called The Understudy that dealt with Broadway actors and their (you guessed it) understudies. And it’s this idea that fuels the body horror in Black Swan.

The horror occurs when Nina realises that Lily is the dancer who could replace her in Swan Lake. She begins to see her double in Lily before she starts to see it in herself.

This is achieved through small but effective moments of gore and mutation that show Nina changing into the Black Swan: the skin of her fingers peels off as though she’s shedding; black feather begin to appear from scratches in her back; the sclera of her eyes turns a bloody red.

As Nina changes, her transformation becomes both an encouragement to her career and a saboteur of her health. As always in body horror, it is terrifying to watch oneself transform into another being.

But the worrying message of Black Swan is that Nina, unlike many other poor souls in body horror films, will happily turn into a monster – as that means she reaches perfection.