Genres
Body horror
A horror subgenre showcasing grotesque violation of the body through mutation, disease, zombification and uncontrolled transformation.
Body horror, or biological horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction that intentionally showcases a grotesque or visceral experience of the human body or of another creature: violation through aberrant sex, mutation, mutilation, zombification, gratuitous violence, disease or unnatural movements. Its signature distinction is that bodily distortion rarely results from immediate violence, as in a slasher; it stems from a loss of conscious control, through mutation, disease or uncontrolled transformation. Phillip Brophy coined the term in 1983, and David Cronenberg is described as a principal originator of the film genre.
The literary line runs from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through Kafka's The Metamorphosis to Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", with Junji Ito carrying it in manga. For prose writers the genre is a slow-dread discipline rather than a gore contest: the body changing under the character is the antagonist, closer to cosmic horror's helplessness than to the knife. See how to write horror.