The Itch

A man undertakes a debilitating experiment which causes him to scratch at his body while it oozes, bleeds, and decomposes over the days he spends in the facility.

Will (Nagvajara) has awoken in a basement room where he knows little about what’s going on around him. He is under surveillance in every room of the bare apartment he’s using as a makeshift laboratory, with CCTV cameras in the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen watching his every move. There is an enigmatic note left in the bathroom cabinet by a guy named ‘Rog’ (Potvin), encouraging Will in whatever course he has embarked upon, while several small vials of an unknown serum are lined up in a sequentially numbered row beside it.

Will is taking notes in a journal as he progresses through this seeming medical trial, apparently aware that he has some mission to accomplish, and that he is doing it for the love of a long-lost partner who died prematurely. He keeps waking up at later points each day, knocked out from the previous day’s injection, and always with something new happening to his body, nothing that is ever any good. His body starts to itch and ache; he’s getting scratches and lesions on his skin; parts of him are starting to flake and peel away; and his insides are just screaming to get out. It sounds like the medicine is working.

Over the course of a week, we follow Will as he falls apart due to the experiment he is participating in. The story pieces together each day as we check back in to see how he is doing. Spoiler alert: He’s not doing very well. In a very Cronenberg fashion, Will slowly descends deeper and deeper into body horror territory, as The Itch he feels inside him begins to overtake his multiple senses. There’s plenty of bodily fluids being expelled, and dirty liquids flowing into filthy drains, as Will’s condition progresses towards its conclusion, with nothing much being given away until the end about what kind of motivation could exist in order for someone to do this to themselves willingly.

In this way, The Itch, owes a lot to recent body horror sensation, The Substance (2024), as Will’s psyche is fractured in two, and the memory blackouts become more frequent and intense. Still, he pushes forward on his trajectory, somehow feeling that the outcome will be beneficial, if not for him then for someone else, or society as a whole. This also causes echoes of The Fly (1986), as Will’s addiction can’t be sated and each step forward brings about another severe debilitation in his condition. In the end, what Will becomes is nothing of his former self, with only this new ideal filling his every impulse.

Told in short, sharp bursts, The Itch tells its tale in under fifteen minutes, with an extra expository sequence hemmed in during the credits to help us get a better understanding of what has transpired. There’s plenty of jump cuts and clashing imagery, along with the requisite gory outpourings, from writer, director, editor, and producer, Gordon Phillips, with a soundtrack of scratchy strings played alongside to keep everything off-kilter. The cinematography from Marcelo Quinones saturates the screen with white light, while also pulling us into the deep, dark places that Will needs to go to as he fights for his survival. These technical aspects are all very well accomplished, and they meld together in a sub-dungeon, holy trauma kind of way to really boost the effectiveness of the feeling that the audience is exposed to.

If there’s something to gripe about, it’s that we’re not party to Will’s backstory until very near the end, or even beyond that. This keeps us from connecting truly with his character, not knowing him to be sympathetic or otherwise, as we watch him endure his suffering. This categorises the body horror as slightly voyeuristic and fetishized, as we don’t feel any need for what he’s going through. This can make The Itch seem like an homage to the previously mentioned films, without really allowing it to strike out on its own. While The Itch takes succour from those that have gone before, it is hard to see the true originality needed for it to stand out from a fairly oversized pack, despite the fact that it is extremely well made.