HALLOWEENTOWN, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Every day this month, resident horror movie enthusiast and 828newsNOW staff reporter Pruett Norris is recommending a Halloween film for your macabre amusement.
Whether they be monster movies or fearsome family films, demonic possessions or slasher sensations, this exercise hopes to encourage spooky seasonal “scream”ings at home or in cinemas.
As the old saying goes, “trick or treat, trick or treat, give me something good to…watch.”
Day 6: A DIFFERENT MAN (2024, 112 min., directed by Aaron Schimberg)
Body horror is making a comeback.
“A Different Man” is one of two films in the horror subgenre now playing in theaters, though much more understated than its peer.
The movie stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, a struggling actor with neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition which causes benign tumors to grow on the face. The prosthetics used to transform Stan are incredible and it is worth seeing the film for how it navigates the face he wears alone.
However, more notable is Adam Pearson, a scene-stealing actor who actually has neurofibromatosis. In the film, Pearson plays Oswald, a man who wrests a theatrical performance away from Edward after Edward undergoes an experimental surgery to transform his face into that of the conventionally handsome Stan.
The film is a blackly comic take on theatre, looks and love, and a meta one, too. The narrative is constantly commenting on itself; movies about movies, or movies about performance, are no stranger to effectively parodying themselves in the practice.
However, “A Different Man” takes things a step further. Director Aaron Schaumburg is cleverly wrestling with his film’s existence through the Machiavellian machinations of its characters, justifying and condemning it in equal measure. It’s fascinating to watch a piece of art responding to itself in real time, and completely unpretentiously, too. Schimberg throws any accusations of being hoity-toity out the window.
In one scene late in the film, a conversation between a despondent Edward and a patron of he and Oswald’s show asks a stream of questions about its ethical origins, in turn serving as a lens into Schimberg’s thoughts about the movie that encloses them.
The film doesn’t take a side one way or the other considering the validity of its existence. That is left for the audience to decide.
“A Different Man” is now playing in theaters nationwide.
Looking for more October movie recommendations? Read the rest of the 828boosNOW archive:
DAY 1: BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE