The Beauty (Hulu) 

By: Rachel Brodeur

In a social satire turned outbreak action movie, Hulu’s The Beauty is unexpected, chaotic and hard to look away from. From the creative visionary, Ryan Murphy(Monster: The Ed Gein Story, All’s Fair), who had his hand in six shows in 2025 alone, he creates in The Beauty a show like nothing else on television. 

The core of The Beauty is surprisingly resonant. It explores that craving that both men and women have for youth and magnetism. At its best The Beauty throws a critical spotlight on industries that prey on people’s insecurities with faulty promises of risky procedures and expensive products to help them become more attractive. However, The Beauty quickly separates itself from anything grounded as it plunges face first into the land of science fiction body horror. People in this version of our current world are not changing their appearance through surgery or product, but rather through sex. 

Beauty in the show is spread like a sexually transmitted virus, directly through intimate contact. It transforms people, rather gruesomely at first, through body contorting, skin melting, bone breaking, metamorphosis, that eventually leaves them empirically and often unrecognizably gorgeous. Of course, it wouldn’t be horror, if the newfound glamour didn’t have its price of eventual doom. The Beauty may attempt to make space for itself following the success of the Academy Award nominated film The Substance (2024). The Substance also blended its commentary on aging and vanity with body horror, but it rooted itself in strong performances, and this is where The Beauty just cannot measure up. 

Evan Peters (X-Men: Apocalypse, American Horror Story), a favorite of Murphy’s, plays lead investigator Cooper Madsen, where he anchors the show and conveys the seriousness and intensity one would expect from someone trying to almost single-handedly save the world. Why he would be doing so much of an investigation of this magnitude solo is a question that perhaps they’re hoping viewers don’t bother to ask. The cast also features star Ashton Kutcher (That 70s Show, The Butterfly Effect), someone who has plenty of acting experience, but here, whether it be the fault of a hamfisted script, or just a choice to go broad and campy, seems to deliver his lines as if he’s in on a joke the rest of the show isn’t fully committing to. Lines are quippy and reminiscent of comic book pages. 

Despite the sloppy inconsistency of tone between serious and camp, I’m confident that The Beauty will find its audience of fans that cannot look away from the gore or the sex. The show is comedically ultra violent and made for the ones that appreciate the unpredictability of unrealistic action sequences and over-the-top fight scenes.  It is only a matter of time and perhaps age before The Beauty solidifies its place as a cult classic.

Rachel’s Rating: 5/10

Hulu’s The Beauty is fun, action-packed, and often horrifying to watch. Just don’t take it too seriously, because, much like actual beauty, the content of this show is very much only skin deep.