the body
Where did the concept of The Body comes from?
It began with Reese Witherspoon. Her speech accepting the Woman Of The Year award kicked things off. She lamented always reading scripts where a woman is in a perilous situation and turns to her leading man and says, “What do we do now?"
I love land-blasting tropes, and so wanted to write a film where all the man said was ‘What do we do now?’. It evolved from there, but this is what started the process.
What is THE BODY about?
We won’t give away the story this early on but…
The BODY is an examination of what makes us human. In the face of world-shaping catastrophic events, it’s the small connections that shape who we are and keep us human. In the face of a possible alien invasion, it’s these moments that tell us what is truly happening and help unravel the mystery of who we are and what we are becoming.
What is at the core of the film?
The centrepiece of the film is undying love: a bond that holds our heroes close together even though they have different understandings of what that is. It’s the love that survives tragedy, provides hope and connection, and even breaks through unbelievable boundaries to assert itself, that centres the film and drives our heroes. What it ultimately does to them may be up for debate, but the presence of it throughout every step of their journey is not.
What tropes are laid bare in the film?
Most obvious we have upended the ‘hero/damsel in distress’ dynamic, but the film is laden with horror and sci-fi tropes flipped on their ears: The black woman who dies first in the horror film, the ‘kill the gays’ trope from the 90’s, the contained horror turning into a road movie, the stranger you can’t trust who knows too much... they all get flipped/turned inside out as the main victim of the old trope, becomes a hero of note in this one.
—Writer/Director Christopher Logan