Suitable Flesh

Grade: C-

However many times I’ve used the “soap opera” comment in a review this year, we have a winner in that department, with Suitable Flesh. There’s almost always music underneath, sounding like it’s right out of a daytime soap. This is a messy movie, and I’m not just talking about the gore. I almost turned it off a few times less than half an hour in, because it was annoying and I didn’t like the style.

I was all ready to write it off as one of the worst movies of the year, but then it got a short-lived burst of campy fun near the end. It was too little too late, but you can see the actors enjoying themselves. It’s a possession movie, so there’s a lot of people playing each other. 22-year-old Judah Lewis, from the Christmas Chronicles films, does his best Heather Graham. And Graham is obviously having a great time portraying what it would be like if any young man found themselves with Heather Graham’s body.

She plays Dr. Elizabeth Derby: a psychiatrist; evidently not a very responsible, ethical, or good one. She gets fixated on Asa (Lewis), who shows up at her office unannounced at the end of the day. Somebody is soul-hopping from body to body. Asa is part of the chain, and Elizabeth is about to be, too. Her husband Eddie, played by Jonathan Schaech (the douchey lead singer of The Wonders in That Thing You Do!), tells her that their recent physical activity has been the best it’s ever been. If he only knew that she was someone else at the time.

The cast also includes Bruce Davison (Crazy/Beautiful) and Barbara Crampton, a veteran of schlocky horror flicks such as Re-Animator and From Beyond. The movie’s climax is well done. It’s complicated fun to keep up with who is who at any particular moment – and I liked a scene where we see what we need to see via the screen in a car that displays what’s behind the vehicle when it’s in reverse. But overall, it’s an insufferable experience that tries its hand at several different things without really leaning into any one. Take the production values of an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, give it the grisliness of Eli Roth, have everybody overact, and thickly lay on the score of General Hospital or All My Children, and you’d have Suitable Flesh. For a minute or two, I thought about recommending it. I must not have been myself.

Grade: C-