"Appendage" Movie Review

“Appendage” is a horror/drama movie that was released on March 11, 2023, and premiered on Hulu on Oct. 2 of the same year.

It features Hadley Robinson, Emily Hampshire and Brandon Mychal Smith in lead roles.

It has received mixed reviews from multiple movie review sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.

It follows the story of Hannah, a young adult whose life is filled with stress stemming from her job, her parents and her new boyfriend. These stresses manifested themselves into a parasitic creature that came out of her midsection and can move, think and communicate.

Hannah is in disbelief of this parasite at first, locking it in her closet and then in her basement after it grew in size. She learns from a support group that she is a chimera, which means she grew up with a twin in her mother’s womb and absorbed the twin before birth. She also learns that this parasite feeds off negative emotions such as anxiety, insecurity and sadness.

As Hannah becomes more involved with the support group and her new reality, she begins to push away important people in her life such as her new boyfriend Kaelin and her best friend Esther.

This change in her lifestyle negatively affects her mental health, allowing the parasite to feed off her negative emotions and grow stronger.

The parasite grows strong enough to break free of its captivity and subdue Hannah before taking over Hannah’s life as an identical lookalike of her and tying her up in the basement where it was previously held.

The chimera support group is revealed to all be parasites that have taken over their hosts, and Claudia, Hannah’s best friend from the support group, is revealed to have played a massive role in the strengthening and freeing of Hannah’s parasite.

Hannah then must figure out how to stop her parasite before it begins to hurt all of the important figures in her life.

The storyline was an intriguing one, and multiple unexpected plot twists throughout the movie will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

The explanations for the unnatural phenomena throughout the movie were also well done, avoiding the issue of leaving viewers wondering why or how everything was occurring.

The movie was poorly written, with many of the conversations between characters seeming unnatural. The parasite constantly used the word “b***h” like it was the only derogatory word it knew, which did not fit the persona and theme of a parasitic creature.

“Appendage” would have worked better as a comedy/drama movie, but did not fit the criteria of a good horror movie at all.

Overall, this is not a movie essential for any spooky season binge-watches. It had its good moments, but no one is going to end up scared by this movie.

The drama aspect of this movie was well done, despite the seemingly forced dialogue written for the characters. The horror aspect was a flop, and severely disappointed in that category.

Rating: 2.5/5

Alex Perez is a second-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, please email app5877@psu.edu.