I had never heard of this movie before and, honestly, when I saw that it was on my list for the month, I had no idea why I had put it there. But it’s a horror movie with Heather Graham and Barbra Crampton so I figured it must be decent. What I was mostly surprised by was the movie actually being based on a Lovecraft short story.

Our main character is Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Graham) and we start with her in the Miskatonic psych ward in Arkham, Massachusetts as she talks to her friend and colleague, Dr. Daniella Upton (Crampton). The movie is told in flashback of how Dr. Derby got entangled with a young man that came to see her in a panic because he was sure his father was trying to “take his body”. She tries to help the young man because she believes he is suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder and thinks this could be a major study for her. However, she ends up having sex with him and then becoming the next target for the thing that jumps from body to body.

The movie is hypersexual with a lot of double entendre of “being inside” someone else but never feels lewd. For the most part, sex in this film is a stand in for power with pretty much every sex scene being about who is in control. Whether that be in control of the situation, the relationship, or just who is in control of a body. That loss of control of one’s own body coupled with the sexual overtones fluctuates between it being a metaphor for giving in to passion and the terror of losing bodily autonomy that comes with sexual assault. The fact the movie can do both of these things without getting overly graphic or explicit means it was able to expertly walk a line that many others have failed to.

The story is gender swapped from the original short story it’s based on, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, and is way hornier. Not that it’s particularly hard to be hornier than ol’ H.P. Lovecraft. The expansion of the lore out from the short story gives a broader scope. The original story is more familial with it being specifically the main character’s father-in-law that is doing the soul swapping. Detaching the threat from being in a family makes the horror more about the way the temptations and desires outside our normal life can consume us. The first patient we see Dr. Derby dealing with is someone addicted to smoking and the parallels of not being able to help ourselves even when we know something isn’t healthy for us is the main thrust of the film.

I liked this a lot more than I thought I would given that I haven’t really heard anything about it online. It also has some nasty effects towards the end but this is much more of a psychological horror than a bloody gorefest.

Score: 4 out of 5