Beautiful people across the world are blowing up, and we’re not talking social media. That’s the nightmare starting point of mega producer Ryan Murphy‘s The Beauty, a freaky, fascinating sci-fi/body-horror thriller (co-created with Matthew Hodgson).
“Everyone wants beauty. It’s the oldest, purest form of currency there is,” muses FBI agent Cooper Madsen (Murphy regular Evan Peters). “Beauty is pain, my friend,” says his partner on the job, and often in bed, Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall). Is it ever.
Together, these glam feds trot the globe from Paris to Rome to Venice to New York, investigating a sexually transmitted virus linked to a mysterious miracle drug known as The Beauty. This pharmaceutical fountain of youth is also a Frankenstein pathogen with the most alarming side effects during transformation.
Not that its billionaire backer is all that worried. Ashton Kutcher struts arounds as Byron Forst, a ruthless mogul bankrolling the drug, spouting a be-your-best-self gospel while dispatching the quirky one-eyed assassin Antonio (Anthony Ramos) to clean up infected loose ends. Antonio’s fetish for Christopher Cross ear worms, which become the soundtrack for carnage as he stages grisly executions and torture, is just one of the series’ many stylized flourishes.
Murphy had an early career hit with FX’s plastic-surgery melodrama Nip/Tuck, which regularly posed the question, “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” In The Beauty, this quest for bodily perfection as the “best version of myself” mutates into a broad and savage satire of an “attention culture” seeking instant gratification at all costs. As Forst, sometimes referred to as “The Corporation,” prepares to unleash The Beauty on a public eager for a quick fix, we’re treated to a parody of one of those dancing weight-loss commercials. Overweight and elderly people suddenly and magically become lithe and unnaturally pretty.
In this world, saying “You look marvelous” should come with a warning label.
The excess that we’ve come to expect from a Murphy project is on bold display throughout, including the vision of Isabella Rossellini (as Forst’s caustically unloving spouse) parading around in a series of ridiculous costumes and towering hats. It’s a reminder that the source material is a series of graphic comics. Graphic is one way to describe The Beauty. Also grotesque, campy and creepy, sleek and sick and very, very dark.
The Beauty is about as subtle as a root canal without Novocain, but thankfully it’s a lot more fun. If you can stomach it.
The Beauty, Series Premiere (three episodes), Wednesday, January 21, 9/8c, FX and Hulu
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