Beauty Is A Beast: 7 Best Tales Of Vanity In Horror

Coralie Fargeat’s cult hit about a woman willing to put her life on the line to be beautiful again might just be horror’s definitive commentary on the beauty industry and the pressures it puts on women. A breakout hit that landed Demi Moore her first-ever accolade after forty years of acting, the 2024 body horror film (also starring Margaret Qualley as Moore’s younger self) takes physical transformation to the next level when fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle dabbles in black market drugs that promise to give her back her youth.  

A commentary on society devaluing women as they age, experimenting with The Substance only proves disastrous, as Elisabeth’s younger self develops a mind of her own and quickly turns her host’s life to ruin — only to realize there’s no escape for her, either, in the neverending velodrome of the beauty industry chewing women up and spitting them right back out. 

Perhaps one of the earliest films to deal with the idea that a woman’s worth is tied directly to her beauty, this 1960 French film (originally titled Les Yeux sans visage) has proven to be one of the most influential horror films of all time, despite a tepid reception upon its original release. Cited as inspiration by filmmakers like John Carpenter and Pedro Almodóvar, the tale of a mad scientist attempting to replace his daughter’s disfigured face with that of his own murdered victims is a chilling tale, especially as, similar to the Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder,” star Édith Scob’s face is obscured for most of the film by an eerily smooth white mask. 

Directed by Georges Franju, Eyes Without a Face primarily follows the mad scientist, but it’s Scob’s Christiane who ultimately suffers, driven mad by guilt and isolation. While the only version available in America for over forty years was a dubbed and heavily edited version, audiences can now crawl out of their own skins with the original French version, which, despite being produced with censors in mind, is still a gut-wrenching reminder of how much society (and specifically men) values a woman’s physical form.

There’s probably no career more demanding on one’s looks than modeling, where people of all genders are forced to conform to phenomenally specific ideals of beauty in order to even get a job. (Imagine needing to perfect your pout or lose twenty pounds for an office job.) It’s been described as cutthroat many a time, which makes Nicholas Winding Refn’s 2016 film The Neon Demon all the more ironic, with eyeliner and glitter hiding all the mangled flesh underneath. 

Following aspiring model Jesse (Elle Fanning) who tries her luck in the Los Angele fashion scene, the film is slick, both in its beauty and in the amount of blood said beauty tries to cover, as things quickly go downhill for someone who just wanted to try her hand at fame. Vaguely inspired by the previously mentioned real-life murderess Elizabeth Bathory, it’s not one for those with a weak stomach, filled with young women with no qualms about getting their hands dirty for a shot at being the fairest one of them all.

Would you be willing to go under the knife of someone without a medical license in a dirty back room just to look like you’ve always wanted? That’s the premise of American Mary, a body horror film about a med student who goes the extra mile to perform extreme body modification surgery…for the right price. When beauty standards become so unreal that the only way to achieve them is through backdoor deals in strip clubs, Katharine Isabelle’s Mary is there, scalpel in hand and morals in the bin. 

The destructive nature of societal beauty standards and what they do to our brains is on full display in American Mary, from a woman who wants to become a living doll to Mary herself, who slowly loses touch with reality as she’s abused and betrayed both by academia and by the people around here. There’s a price to pay for perfection, and the universe doesn’t care who pays it, even if they’re not the one striving for it in the first place. 

Rather than being terrifying because he’s willing to go to awful lengths to achieve perfection, Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman — the lead in American Psycho, based on the book of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis — is unsettling because he’s already achieved it. What’s worse, he’ll go to any lengths necessary to maintain it, including taking out people in his inner circle who upset his delicate balance. 

Initially considered unfilmable by Ellis, and currently being remade by Bones and All filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, American Psycho is a cornerstone of contemporary horror, satirizing the perfectly coiffed yuppies of the 1980s and their drive towards perfection. And while a large portion of the film is dedicated to dunking on the consumerism of the “decade of excess,” there’s plenty of commentary on beauty standards as well — take one look at Bateman’s skincare routine and tell me otherwise.

As the only comedic take on beauty and social status on this list, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn’s black comedy Death Becomes Her takes the most lenient approach to what it means to put your life on the line to look pretty. Tortured by their fading fame, two women pay the price for their own vanity when they take a mysterious potion to restore their youth (not unlike The Substance from earlier in this list), only to realize that immortality isn’t as glamorous as the stories make it out to be. 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by David Koepp, the same mind behind the big screen adaptation of Jurassic Park, the film, also starring Bruce Willis and Isabella Rossellini, literally blows holes in the idea that the only way to stay relevant is to stay beautiful. (Sorry, Goldie.) Turns out, beauty isn’t forever, and immortality doesn’t mean keeping your looks forever — in fact, it means more work than ever.

Vampires have always been associated at least partially with beauty — “never grow old, never die,” as the quote from The Lost Boys goes — but few vampire films have ever dealt directly with the idea of maintaining that youth and beauty. Usually, they swing to one end of the pendulum, gorgeous and graceful or old and decrepit. (Looking at you, Count Orlok.) But what happens when one of them suddenly loses their looks, and is desperate to get it back?

That’s the catalyst for Tony Scott’s ‘80s vamp film The Hunger, which does the impossible and steals David Bowie’s looks from him, as the discarded lover of Catherine Denueve’s Miriam. Like Death Becomes Her, beauty and immortality don’t go hand in hand in The Hunger, as Susan Sarandon’s Sarah quickly realizes when Miriam quite literally boxes her old lovers up and puts them on a shelf once they’re no longer beautiful. What a metaphor, huh?