Episode 2 of The Last of Us starts in Jakarta, Indonesia, when mycologist Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim)’s lunch is interrupted by men in military uniforms. Ibu Ratna is taken to a lab where she’s shown a peculiar sight: cordyceps fungus growing in a sample of human tissue. Next thing we know, Ibu Ratna is outfitted with a pressurized suit so that she can examine the body it came from.

We know roughly what she’s going to find in the body, but the revelation of what a cordyceps infection looks like—along with the infection’s final form, revealed later in the episode—is body horror at its most exquisite and revolting. But what makes this particular horror genre so compelling?

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