Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Appendage’ on Hulu, Where New-School Psychology Meets Old-School Body Horror

Many of us have that voice in our heads that emerges once in a while to tell us we’re worthless or dumb or whatever, that Negative Nancy who always sees your glass as half-empty. Now imagine if that voice had an ugly little face, with mottled eyes, oozy skin and scraggly-ragged teeth – that’s the concept behind Appendage (now streaming on Hulu), the debut feature from director Anna Zlokovic, expanding the idea from a six-minute Bite Size Halloween short (starring Rachel Sennott! Also on Hulu!). Her goal is to gross us out and make us laugh and maybe make us ponder the nature of anxiety – now let’s see if she accomplishes that tall task. 

APPENDAGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s 2:40 a.m. and Hannah (Hadley Robinson of Winning Time) is sewing. The birthmark on her side throbs and her sweetheart of a boyfriend Kaelin (Brandon Mychal Smith) urges her to come to bed and then she pricks her finger on a needle and leaves a teensy droplet of blood on the garment. A teensy droplet that will absolutely not go unnoticed by her fashion-designer boss Cristean (Desmin Borges), who’s the kind of abusive prick that prompts you to wonder how someone hasn’t snapped and put him in a body cast yet. But Hannah and her coworker-bestie Esther (Kausar Mohammed) grin and bear the routine dressings-down they receive when their designs don’t meet his impossible, unknowable artistic standards – then go out and drink until they forget, or come up with some cockamamie idea about, you know, actually quitting, and selling their own designs.

Add in Hannah’s shitty, shitty passive-aggressive mother (Deborah Rennard), and you have quite the recipe for ssstrrrressssssssss. In this reality, internalization of such anxieties, specifically if you have “vanishing twin syndrome” and “dual DNA” and you “absorbed your twin in the womb,” manifests as a little gut-goiter monkey who looks like someone forced Chucky to procreate with the ugliest Ghoulie, then melted the baby in a toaster oven. Hannah’s little feller makes gross squelchy-stretchy noises and pops right off, and is such a nasty little puppet, he’s like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog if he had access to her psych eval. This is rather inconvenient for Hannah, so she binds and gags the nasty little shit and locks him in the basement.

Thing is, li’l Chucklecheezlebums or whatever his name is might just be Hannah’s muse – he inspires the dress design that gets that f—wit Cristean swooning. But she wisely doesn’t just ride this weirdness to career success. No, she finds a support group for people with “vanishing twin syndrome,” and realizes she’s not alone in birthing an anxiety goblin, or, to use the more common term, an “appendage.” In fact, the group leader even has a sedation routine that allows one to keep the beast quiet so one can go about one’s life as normal as possible, although I saw a red flag afluttering when he says it’s 150 bucks a week. Hannah befriends fellow support-grouper Claudia (Emily Hampshire), who seems to be just what she needs; not only do they share the same “medical issue,” but she’s a body to lean on when Hannah suspects Esther and Kaelin are cheating on her, and when her shitty, shitty mom exhibits the type of psycho-manipulative behavior that risks getting another “shitty” added to her title. Now, if you’re expecting all of this to come to a head, you’d be right, because all of this, you know, just ain’t right.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I’ve made enough ’80s movie references here (OK, one more: the creature is like E.T. if he drank absinthe instead of Coors), so let’s lean into something more recent, like Hatching, which is about a girl hiding a creature from everyone else, touches upon similar mother issues, and features deliciously weird throwbacky ooey-gooey practical puppet effects.

Performance Worth Watching: Robinson is quite good here, giving her character just enough heft to render her empathetic and multi-dimensional without compromising the deep goofiness of the material.

Memorable Dialogue: Esther checks on Hannah when she’s in the bathroom:

Esther: You OK?

Hannah: Yeah, it just feels like a morning star is being dragged through my uterus.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The manner in which Zlokovic crafts and nurtures Appendage tonally is the delightful surprise here – instead of Hannah reacting with screaming revulsion at this manifestation of the cruelest, hate-filled part of herself, she’s strangely calm. The director goes against the grain of horror-comedy formula and emphasizes psychology over splatter, where most might have their protagonist chase the monster with a butcher knife or hammer (hopefully a peen hammer!) and havve us watch as the guts go sploot before figuring out a way to re-manifest the manifestation. But in this case, stashing the little shit in the cellar might not be a rational impulse, but it emphasizes the film’s central metaphor: You can’t just kill your anxieties and mental illnesses, because they need to be managed.

Now, Appendage isn’t without its issues. It plays out somewhat predictably, ancillary characters tend toward caricature and thematically, it never enriches itself beyond Psych-101 simplicities. But Zlokovic exhibits enough ambition for character growth and visual presentation – Yecch Factor: 7.2 – to make the film reasonably compelling, and amusing in its blend of old-school horror, new-era psychology and lightly wicked satire. 

Our Call: I’d say Appendage grows on you, but then I’d have to flog myself. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.