Curator Watchlist
A lush, unnerving psychological thriller that blends melodrama, body horror, and revenge into something both elegant and deeply disturbing. It’s not for everyone, especially viewers sensitive to sexual violence, transphobic framing, or coercive medical abuse, but it is a memorably crafted provocation.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 2h 0m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes
A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.
Pedro Almodóvar
Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes
A lush, unnerving psychological thriller that blends melodrama, body horror, and revenge into something both elegant and deeply disturbing. It’s not for everyone, especially viewers sensitive to sexual violence, transphobic framing, or coercive medical abuse, but it is a memorably crafted provocation.
Pedro Almodóvar turns a baroque revenge premise into something cold, glossy, and deeply unsettling. The film is built on immaculate surfaces: clean rooms, controlled compositions, and a clinical calm that makes the cruelty feel even more invasive. It’s a movie about bodies, ownership, and the violence of trying to remake another person into an idea.
What lingers most is how the film shifts from melodrama into psychological horror without ever losing its polished, almost luxurious look. Antonio Banderas gives the surgeon a terrifying stillness, while Elena Anaya anchors the film’s emotional and physical unease. The result is hypnotic, but also deliberately hard to sit with.
This is one of those films that can feel brilliant and reprehensible at the same time. Its craftsmanship is undeniable, but so is the discomfort it generates around gender, punishment, and control. If you’re open to a film that wants to unsettle you more than entertain you, it’s a striking watch.
maria (4★) · 5396 likes
what's her skin routine, dermatologists hate her
Karsten (3★) · 4919 likes
what the fuck lmfao
FredM (4★) · 2524 likes
Talk about movies you will not forget having seen them a decade ago, well, this is a perfect example. A truly mesmerizing experience, which gets more and more uncomfortable as it progresses. Forget the slashers with axes, true horror, that's surgeons with scalpels.
SweeneyTom (5★) · 1999 likes
i don't think this should have been my first Pedro Almodovar film
Sally Jane Black · 1698 likes
Still digesting this, but I can't wrap my head around this in any way that doesn't come up the same: transmisogynistic and general misogynistic garbage. Feel free to disagree in the comments if you're a trans woman, non-binary, or, for the non-trans misogyny, a cis woman. TW: forced surgery, transmisogyny, misogyny, rape, kidnapping, suicide * Forced feminization is at best complicated, but here it is filmed in such bright-yet-sterile care that it seems like an indulgence, like the filmmakers found… more
A lavish, twisty tale of manipulation, desire, and captivity with a similarly elegant surface hiding cruelty and power games.
Shares the revenge architecture, shocking reveals, and moral corrosion that make this film so hard to shake.
A classic of surgical body horror and tragic obsession, with the same eerie blend of beauty and violation.
Cronenberg’s clinical body horror and psychological decay make it a strong match for the film’s cold, invasive atmosphere.
For viewers drawn to severe psychological damage, repression, and the collision of desire with self-destruction.
Operatic, grotesque, and stylishly cruel, with a similar taste for excess and punishment.
Another provocative body-obsession film that explores desire, damage, and transgressive fixation.
A disorienting psychological thriller about identity, violation, and the terror of being remade by others.
For its clinical dread, cat-and-mouse psychology, and fascination with predatory control.
A glossy, seductive thriller about reinvention, envy, and identity theft with a similarly polished surface.
A Spanish-language gothic drama with emotional intensity, dread, and a tragic sense of hidden pasts.
Explores the violence beneath domestic normalcy and the unsettling persistence of buried identities.
body horror, identity and transformation, revenge, medical experimentation, obsession, sexual violence, control and captivity, psychological manipulation
psychological thriller, body horror, revenge drama, erotic dread, art-house horror, medical nightmare, slow-burn tension, gothic melodrama, uncomfortable cinema, twist ending