I knew before seeing “The Whale” that it was a movie about a man named Charlie who weighs over 600 pounds, is grief-stricken over the death of his partner, and is effectively trapped in his apartment due to his weight.

I also knew that “The Whale” had attracted a great deal of criticism, provoking anger, disgust and accusations of exploitation. Despite the controversy, Brendan Fraser’s performance has been widely praised, and he’s been nominated for best actor at the 95th Academy Awards.

But what I didn’t know was that this film would make me cry. As I left the theater, I found myself hyperaware of my own fat body moving through the parking lot, and I started to feel the way I often do when I see a reflection of myself in a mirror: monstrous.

In my research on fat characters in popular culture, I point out how the fat character usually must lose weight in order to gain acceptance or to be loved.

In “The Whale,” however, Charlie does not lose weight; the transformation goes in the opposite direction: he gets bigger and bigger, suffering a slow and painful physical breakdown. As I watched the film, I started to understand, with a looming sense of dread, that “The Whale” had no plans to recuperate this character. The fatness was the subject and the point.

I began to realize that this movie was not a melodrama, nor an uplifting tale about redemption; to me, “The Whale” is a body horror film that exploits the fear and disgust people feel toward fatness.

The body as a monster

Body horror is a subset of the horror film genre that depicts the destruction, degeneration or mutation of the human body. These films are designed to gross out viewers, and the protagonist often becomes the monster of the story as their body becomes more and more repulsive.

Director David Cronenberg made the subgenre famous in films such as “The Fly,” “Shivers,” “Videodrome” and “Rabid.”

“The Fly,” a remake of the 1958 film of the same name, tells the story of a scientist named Seth Brundle who merges his DNA with that of a common housefly.

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