Some movies fall under the category of cosmic horror, and they may or may not draw direct inspiration from Lovecraft and the many, many successors in this genre. Other films are distinctly Lovecraftian, either referencing elements of Lovecraft's mythology (Arkham, Cthulhu, etc.) or adapting his actual stories. There's also a third category of films as I see it: movies based on Lovecraft's reinterpretation through the lens of Stuart Gordon's style of Lovecraft movies. I think Suitable Flesh fits this last category. This last category isn't just characterized by a style emulating Stuart Gordon's direction or screen writing, but also the notion that there's a strong psycho-sexual undercurrent in the mythos of Lovecraft, something that may have been there on an unconscious level for Lovecraft himself, not out of sorts for his time, when psychiatry in the nascent age of Freud and Jung. Also, Gordon's penchant for copious levels of gore. Director Joe Lynch is channeling all of this in spades in Suitable Flesh, which is loosely based on The Thing on the Doorstep (super super loosely), and to prove my point further is even dedicated to Stuart Gordon.
Dr. Elizabeth Derby meets the wrong kind of patient, but perhaps it was inevitable given she maintains a practice in Arkham, Massachusetts. Asa Waite is a young man who claims to be periodically possessed by his father, Ephram. At first she thinks she just wants to help him, but really she's abnormally, sexually intrigued by Asa and what she thinks is just a schizophrenic episode. Asa, however, contends that his father is literally possessing him. After meeting Ephram, Elizabeth has lots of clues in front of her she does not recognize with her clinical nonbeliever mind (including what one can only assume is the Necronomicon on his desk). A short time later an emergency happens, Asa begging for her to help, and she stumbles on a scene in which Ephram appears to be having a heart attack and Asa wants to finish him off. Things go sharply awry as Asa is possessed, then they have sex, then she discovers that in having sex he possesses her, and then in short order Ephram with Asa's mind awakens and possessed Asa cuts his head off. Then the house catches fire.
Like, that's all in the first act!
Anyway, it continues from here and escalates....quite rapidly.....as Ephram, now in Asa's body, reveals he very much wants to take possession of Elizabeth now. He can do so over the phone, with the right spell, fairly easily, while leaving his own body as Asa chained up on a basement somewhere so she can't escape once she's swapped bodies with him. This leads to an interesting undercurrent of sexual violation as the mind of Ephram has his way with Elizabeth's body while she is dispossessed. Oh yeah, and there's an altar to what I would assume is Azathoth or something in the basement. Weee!
This movie was a trip. Watch it with people who don't mind lots of sex (though, to contrast, it is slightly tamer sex than in, for example, the recent movie Honey Don't), and the sex does play heavily into the story. There is also Elizabeth's friend who works at Arkham Asylum, Dr. Upton, who is the straight-laced friend who wants to help but can't quite put the clues together (and also in the original story the actual narrator).
This movie was frickin' wild, a total trip. The one takeaway you should get out of this movie is that weird shit goes down all the time in Arkham, Mass. and the profession of psychiatrist is probably fraught with existential danger in that lovely town. Well worth a watch, even if you aren't in to Lovecraftian stuff! A solid A!
Spoiler! Best moment: the scene where Elizabeth tries to kill Asa by backing into him with the car, and the lovely use of the car rear-cam during the scene. Second best moment: that poor security guard!
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