Species

Margot is an intern in the emergency room, when she begins to notice strange symptoms – first in patients she treats, then in herself. At night, her body seems to transpire blood: her skin is covered in a thin sanguine sheen, before breaking out in boils and sores.

It is a tad lazy to rush to draw comparisons between every female-directed body horror – but so is refurnishing the veterinary school setting of Julia Ducournau’s Raw with The Substance‘s hyper-sensory style of lurid montages. Species (Sanguine) follows in Fargeat’s footsteps of rejecting subtlety but fails to engage the viewer in any way, just bombards them with an aggressive repetition of close-ups that eventually start to feel like the product of budgetary limitations.

As it hardly sets out to portray life in any realistic fashion, one cannot fault the French-Belgian production for its constant air of artifice. However it is difficult to believe in the stressful atmosphere of hospital life, when the building looks so devoid of life, utterly lacking in any kind of background activity.

The lacklustre script is a continual affront to the viewer’s intelligence. Not only does a character in all seriousness explain how he invented a method to survive in this hectic environment: breathe in and think of something peaceful, but the picture reaches its peak of absurdity when this is later implemented as some miraculous new remedy.

If the denouement of this malady is intended as a big reveal, the English title effectively thwarts these plans for an international audience, though any viewer considering how the opening scene might relate to Margot’s story will have come to anticipate it.

Maybe there is some form of morbid fun to be had with how little substance there is behind the garish and derivative packaging. With its exaggerated exuberance and fragmented pacing, Species may be the ideal horror feature for those impatient with sustained focus, but even at its most grotesque, Marion Le Corroller’s debut never gets under one’s skin.