THE BEAUTY Season One

Ashton Kutchner

THE BEAUTY (2026 TV series). Season One. Co-produced by Ryan Murphy.  

FBI agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), who claim they are just "casually" involved with each other, stumble across an incredible conspiracy engineered by billionaire Byron Forst (Vincent D'Onofrio, then Ashton Kutchner). A scientist in the sociopathic Forst's employ has come up with "the Beauty," an all-purpose, essentially instant chemical injection that can turn a person younger and more attractive once they emerge from a kind of plastic cocoon. Unfortunately, after three years or so those who take the Beauty may literally explode, as happens to several crazed fashion models. The Beauty is essentially a plague, and can be sexually transmitted, bypassing the injection, although the results in that case are even more uncertain. Jordan, who has sex with a hot guy who took the treatment, becomes younger and sexier (turning into Jess Alexander), Cooper undergoes a startling transformation, and one poor teenage girl ... Millions of people would hock their souls to get the treatment, but is the cost too high, and what about the horrific side effects undergone by some patients?

Isabella Rossellini

Based on a graphic novel, The Beauty, which has quite a few satiric targets, can be dumb, but it is also fascinating, suspenseful, odd, very gross at times, and I must admit highly enjoyable, a sort of guilty pleasure. Kutchner gives a ferociously mesmerizing performance as the utterly self-centered and evil younger version of Forst, and the other players -- including Anthony Ramos as a hit man employed and then betrayed by Forst -- are on the money. Isabella Rossellini is Forst's sarcastic and uncompromising wife, who seems to completely detest him, and Ben Platt is perhaps overly campy as a guy who gets infected when a model bursts into pieces at a public function. Viewers might see some similarities to The Substance, but the Beauty graphic novel was published several years before the Demi Moore movie.

Verdict: Compelling and slick horror series. Let's hope there's a season two. ***. 

RESURRECTION (2022)

Rebecca Hall

RESURRECTION (2022). Written and directed by Andrew Semans.

Margaret (Rebecca Hall) has a daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), who's just about to turn eighteen. Margaret reencounters a man, David (Tim Roth), with whom she had an abusive relationship many years before, and is afraid he might be out to harm her or her daughter. Apparently David murdered their baby boy, Ben, and Margaret let him get away with it. However, things take a surreal turn when she tells a colleague, Gwen (Angela Wong Carbone), that David ate the baby and Ben is still alive inside him. Huh? 

Carrying a baby? Tim Roth

Obviously Resurrection can not be taken literally, and the slender characterizations further distance the viewer from what's happening on screen. Resurrection might have worked better as a half-hour short, but stretched out to nearly two hours it doesn't work at all, although it begins well with an initially intriguing premise. However, the whole movie is really just an acting exercise for Hall and Roth, both of whom are excellent (although in a long monologue talking about David, Hall seems to be merely acting in the technical sense rather than feeling the role). You can take this film as an abstract study of the effects of abuse and control, or of a woman who is slowly losing her mind, or preferably, not take it at all. I choose the latter. Rebecca Hall was the executive producer. While I can see what attracted her to the project -- it's a starring role with juicy acting prospects -- she should still choose her projects with more care in the future. 

Verdict: At least I didn't have to pay to see this. Too weird for its own good. ** for the acting and cinematography.