The Beauty review: Ryan Murphy’s treatise on physical perfection is unhinged, empty and entertaining

For more than two decades, prolific TV writer, director and producer Ryan Murphy has been obsessed with beauty.

His 2003 series Nip/Tuck was set within the cosmetic surgery industry, but over six seasons, the show was more a high-end soap that dialled up the melodrama and lurid thriller plotlines than any meaningful interrogation of the impossible standards of peak hotness.

Across a slate of TV shows including American Horror Story, Hollywood and Doctor Odyssey, Murphy has revelled in gorgeous faces and sculpted bodies, and now, in a show bearing the title The Beauty, he wants to ask the question, at what point is it all too much?

It’s hard to take any exploration of it too seriously, especially when it’s blindingly obvious The Beauty doesn’t really know where it stands. It’s confused and it’s confusing.

With the same hand that makes a gory meal out of those who chase physical perfection by dispatching them in the most violent way, it photographs those same characters with drooling reverence, as the camera slowly glides over smooth skin and chiselled features.

What are we to make of this? Or the fact that in the world of The Beauty, someone as stunning as Rebecca Hall is the (mild spoiler) “before” in a radical transformation. That’s not grim, it’s demoralising and offensive.

The plot is as unhinged as the show, so at least there’s some consistency. There’s a sexually transmitted virus that, if you catch it, makes you model beautiful, no matter where your baseline was.

Old, fat, scarred, wrinkled, plagued with genetic illnesses or cancer? The virus is the cure-all! It will turn you into Adonis or Venus, the paragon of aesthetic perfection.

But there’s a drawback, obviously. In the opening sequence, an unnamed model played with ferocity by Bella Hadid goes nuts during a runway show in Paris. She attacks bystanders, is literally thirsting, and hijacks a motorbike until she crashes outside a bistro.

Apparently, you get about 800 days of optimal beauty and then your body just kind of explodes. It’s bloody as hell. But it’s far from the last drop of blood you’ll see. Oh no, there’s so much body horror to squirm through.

It’s as if Murphy saw The Substance and went, “I can do more”. More is more is more is more, that’s the Murphy way.

The Substance is a thematic and visual reference point, but instead of the austereness of that film’s bathroom, think opulent Venetian manors. Another allusion is American Psycho – there’s a black leather, glass and chrome lounge room set that could have been lifted out of a Patrick Bateman interiors catalogue, and, of course, that obsession with outer beauty by those who are inwardly decrepit.

The tone has a lot in common with American Psycho writer Bret Easton Ellis in that there’s a sheen to everything and it’s all a bit, well, nasty.

The visuals of perfect bodies stalking through scenes around the world, committing violence, sometimes in service of a wider conspiracy (here, it’s a billionaire’s plan to produce, market and sell the virus to the insecure and body conscious) recalls Ellis’s fifth novel, the impossible-to-adapt Glamorama.

The cast includes Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Ashton Kutcher and Jeremy Pope, but the most perfect bit of casting is Isabella Rossellini, who deliciously chews through every one of her scenes, dripping with contempt for her onscreen husband.

But Rossellini’s presence also points to something else, which is that Murphy’s show has no new insight on the social and internal pressure to fit a particular ideal of beauty. It’s not saying anything that Death Becomes Her didn’t hit in a quarter of the runtime and 34 years earlier.

Murphy has pointed to Ozempic and “quick-fix” transformation drugs, and even with that newer wave of obsession, The Beauty still traverses similar thematic paths. It’s about as deep as The Substance. Shock but not awe.

But, this is actually one of Murphy’s more successful new shows in quite a while. It is unapologetically crazy, and at least it’s not stomping on the lingering trauma of real-life serial killer victims’ families.

It can be wildly entertaining – although not always – and the unpredictability of the story is compulsive. There’s enough here that makes you want to go through to the end, even if it is often frustrating viewing.

The Beauty is not high art, and it’s certainly not searing commentary, but there’s enough here in its campy, maximalist and arch vibes, even if it is ultimately empty and ugly.

The Beauty is streaming on Disney+