It was a moment film nerds could only dream of: Actor/director Joe Lynch was seated next to Quentin Tarantino at an event, and they were going deep on lenses. Specifically, how Tarantino had gotten his mitts on Ultra Panavision 70, a 70mm format from Ben Hur, for his 2015 Western The Hateful Eight. Not much could distract Lynch from a moment like that — until he heard Stuart Gordon, of Re-Animator fame, discussing his latest collaboration with screenwriter Dennis Paoli: a modern-day retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Thing at the Doorstep” called Suitable Flesh.
“I was like, ‘I’m sorry, Quentin, I’ll be right back,’” Lynch recalls, laughing. “[Gordon] was getting the band back together.”
Paoli and Gordon made horror history with their Lovecraft retellings, including Re-Animator, about a medical student with a taste for, well, reanimating corpses, and 1986’s From Beyond, which centers around scientists on a quest to see creatures from other dimensions. Suitable Flesh would be based on the aforementioned Lovecraft story, about an entity that jumps from person to person, taking over their lives. The movie stalled, however, when Gordon died of organ failure in 2020.
In the end, the script was saved when actress Barbara Crampton — who starred in Gordon and Paoli’s previous films — sent it to Lynch, thinking it might be up his alley. “Dennis was cc’d on that email, so I was already fanboying out from both of them,” Lynch says. “So I knew what I was getting into when I clicked that PDF.”
The final movie, out Friday in theaters and on-demand, is a psychosexual horror show that follows psychiatrist Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham) as she becomes obsessed with a young patient who appears to have multiple personality disorder (Judah Lewis). Little does she know that her attraction to him is more dangerous than a fling with a younger man, but a means to an end for an entity that uses sex to try on and discard new bodies at will.
Lynch spoke with Rolling Stone about sex and horror, casting his leads, and the biggest change he made to the original script.
I heard you made a big change to the script once you signed on: swapping the genders of the patient, doctor, and Derby’s friend and colleague, played by Barbara Crampton.
I just felt like it was such an old-fashioned trope at this point, especially with body-swapping. I wanted to see this story told with older women. My writing partner and I did an eight-page note thesis for it going, “Here are all the reasons why we think this should resonate.” And then three days later, after me gnawing on my fingernails going, “I don’t know if they’re going to like it or not,” Dennis wrote back and said, “Give me a couple of weeks. I really like this idea.” And then we were off to the races.
Can you tell me about your choice to cast Heather Graham?
I was just so intrigued by the idea of Heather not just playing straight, but the possibilities of unleashing her onto these other roles, too [when her body is invaded by the entity]. I was a fan of Heather’s, obviously, from Boogie Nights and Austin Powers and Bowfinger. Especially Boogie Nights. It was actually Barbara who came up with the idea to approach Heather because we had to find someone who was fearless in terms of the eroticism and the sexuality of it, but also the horror. They tried to make this film for years, and every time that Stuart and Dennis and all the producers tried to get it made, it always came back as, “Sorry, too much sex.” And I guess in certain purviews and certain cultures and times, I get that, but the sex part was going to be so tantamount to how we were going to tell the story and how character-based it was. It was, in a way, a character of the film.
So in Boogie Nights, there’s this moment where Heather [who played porn actress Rollergirl] is in a limo and there’s a moment of realization that Heather has on her face that still haunts me to this day. I can think of the moment right now where she looks into the camera and there is a quiet, vacant dread on her face. I told her that when we had our first Zoom call, just how much of a rollercoaster she put us through. I said, “I want to apply that same kind of feeling in this film, although we’re not going to be traversing through 10 years of your life. We have three days of this woman’s life that we have to go on this wild ride both emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, cosmically.”
Tell me a bit about casting Judah as Asa, the patient. I was surprised to find out that he’s so young — 21 — after watching the movie. His acting is so mature.
Judah was an absolute discovery for me, even though I was very aware of his work. I kept hearing raves about his work when I went to the premiere of The Babysitter because I knew Samara Weaving [who stars in that movie]. And we were at the premiere, and I think Judah was even sitting in front of me, and she was just going on and on about how great he was and everything. She couldn’t stop talking about how great he was, how professional he was, and how he was going to be a big star. And I did not disagree.
There was something about his vulnerability, that he can look incredibly young, and I’m sure people hate hearing this term, but he’s an old soul. That was something that I needed with this character from the jump. Judah came to set prepared every day, and there were days when he had to play two, if not three characters, sometimes in the same scene. There’s nothing more exciting than watching an actor literally transform in front of you and play multiple characters and never skip a beat. At the end of the [first] week was his birthday. I watched this kid grow up and, man, I can’t wait to do it again.
It’s not world domination. This character wants to just get their rocks off and get their kink on.
Sex is usually ominous in horror movies — you get stabbed at summer camp after losing your virginity, etc. Tell me a bit about making a horror movie where the sex is actually somewhat sexy.
I grew up in a cultural time where sex was weaponized. From, say, John Carpenter’s Halloween on, sex equaled death. So having that, combined with growing up in the Eighties when AIDS became prevalent, sex was… it was a tough situation to go through.
When I read this script, the thing that intrigued me and scared me the most about this story and how sexuality was used in this is that you have this cosmic entity that has been jumping from body to body and surviving through living vicariously through other people’s identities and their body autonomy. This is something that we even hammered in more when we were doing rewrites: the entity is not doing something like in The Dead Zone where they’re like, “I want to be the president and take over.” It’s not world domination. This character wants to just get their rocks off and get their kink on.
Sex had to be a character, it had to be a component, it had to be part of the plot, and it had to be part of their characters. If we didn’t have that, then I think [the story] would’ve changed to world domination, which I’m sorry, but that’s boring. I think audiences will relate more to [this] because there are people who have lost their control over their bodies or have done horrible things just to climax.
How did you make sure the actors were comfortable with all the sexual content?
As an actor myself, I wanted to make sure that they were fully in control of their own bodies, that there was full consent. Their lawyers and their managers were, of course, concerned, and I sent them 32-page legal documents explaining every single shot and every detail and why we’re doing it, not just like, “Hey, this is what the audience wants.”
So we storyboarded every single shot in all the sex scenes, and once the actors knew exactly what we were doing, you could tell that they felt completely comfortable. We still had a closed set. We still made sure that everyone was incredibly comfortable at all times. I was there, and it was just me and two camera people and the actors. That was it. Once they felt like they were in control of the situation, they were comfortable, then that’s where the chemistry started.
Given the way the entity moves, I was wondering… Was Asa abused by his father? When we first meet Asa he’s terrified by his dad (played by Bruce Davison), who has been taken over by the entity — and now it’s after him.
Judah brought up that very question during one of our first conversations. It made me really think about it. I had to say, “I need a minute. Give me some time to think about it.” So I did.
Judah and I talked about how I think [his father] Ephraim would’ve been a lot more kindly to his son, who was almost in a way kind of like a grandson [since he was so much older]. So there was this responsibility and protection of Asa that went away very quickly when Ephraim was taken over by the entity. I think that’s something that is one of the most heartbreaking elements that doesn’t really get delved into — but we talked about it a lot before — that Asa lost possibly his best friend. They only had each other, and there was a relationship between this younger man and this older man that was then exploited when the entity came around.
I have a feeling — and this is something that I think only Judah would really know within his work— but I wouldn’t be surprised if the entity tried to sexually abuse Asa. The trust factor of Asa losing his father, and then his own body being stolen… The look that Asa gives in that very first shot, that’s a kid who’s been abused. I’m glad that you picked up on that because that’s something that I think you don’t get upon first screening or first view, but hopefully, when people watch it again they’ll start to see the little details.