Let’s be clear, if you’re squeamish in any way, the new body horror film The Substance directed and written by Coralie Fargeat is not for you.
Equal parts scathing Hollywood satire and a dark examination of female self-loathing, The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle. Elisabeth is an aging Hollywood starlet turned TV fitness instructor who is fired on her 50th birthday.
After she awakens from a subsequent car accident, a shifty nurse slips her a USB drive containing information about “The Substance,” an injection that creates “a better version of yourself” with a catch. Elisabeth and the new, younger body she graphically births from her spine and names “Sue” (Margaret Qualley) must switch off every seven days.
From there the movie descends into a battle between Elisabeth and her Id as represented by Sue. Her understandable desire to no longer be old and discarded escalates into an uncontrollable addiction to the benefits of being Sue, who takes over her old job and skyrockets into fame. It also results in a complete hollowing out of Elisabeth’s remaining self-worth.
The somewhat derivative plot, at least in terms of body horror canon, is made better by a standout performance from Moore who brings raw emotion to Elisabeth’s inner turmoil which starts to boil over onto the surface. She delivers a heartbreaking scene violently scrubbing off makeup after a failed attempt at dating as equally wonderfully as she does a frenzied, rage-filled cooking scene that is filmed to be as messy and disgusting as any actual body horror.
Practical effects and prosthetics are added as the story develops, and Oscar voters are known to love a good transformation. However, it’s the scenes where Moore is still just normal Elisabeth that feel braver and more impactful in their vulnerability.
Elisabeth and Sue are both left somewhat undeveloped as characters, we never really learn about Elisabeth’s life before her firing aside from scant flashbacks to her former fame, leaving it to the actresses to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, Qualley gets significantly less to do with the bratty and one-note Sue.
Dennis Quaid stands out in his supporting role as the cartoonishly sleazy studio exec Harvey, who chews on the scenery sometimes quite literally, and is the perfect physical representation of Hollywood’s rot even without any monstrous prosthetics. He, and the other men Elisabeth/Sue encounter, do nothing to hide their blatant misogyny and viewpoint of women as objects.
The movie’s cinematography, set design, and score combine to create a claustrophobic experience to perhaps mimic the oppressive experience felt by the characters.
Extreme close-ups, sometimes representing a leering, almost anthropomorphized camera on the studio set, reveal every detail of Elisabeth and Sue’s bodies. The close-ups of Sue are the most uncomfortable in their overly staged effort to titillate her fictional audience which instead ends up provoking discomfort for the film’s real life audience.
Wider shots reveal the eerie spaces Elisabeth moves through in her day-to-day life.
You haven’t seen a long, empty hallway this nauseating since The Shining, an art-deco purgatory between the bright, shiny artificiality of the TV studio and the grimy reality of outside. Elisabeth’s outdated apartment, and its colossal, sterile white-tile bathroom where much of the body horror takes place including the “birth” of Sue, is equally disturbing.
The movie’s score by composer Raffertie is pulsing, punishing electronic music that fills up the otherwise sometimes empty, quiet shots.
Ultimately, it might be hard to reckon with Elisabeth’s extreme self-loathing when Demi Moore is such a stunning presence on screen. It’s that dissonance that makes the film’s plot even more upsetting.
Her self-destruction is tragic, built on the faulty assertion by the anonymous entity behind “The Substance” that “you are one.” For Sue to succeed, Elisabeth must be willing to give away every part of herself until she’s a grotesque shell.
The main issue with The Substance, however, isn’t its transparent criticism of Hollywood/society’s expectations of aging women and how women’s worth is reduced to their bodies. It’s also not necessarily the surreal gore fest that closes out that film, though that’s likely to alienate many viewers.
What makes The Substance fall short of a modern masterpiece is a bloated runtime. The movie pushes past multiple logical endings to feel superfluous (one ending would have sufficed).
Elisabeth hates herself but it feels like the director resents her a bit too with the punishing way her story keeps going and going. Fargeat doesn’t stop until Elisabeth is completely destroyed, an unrestrained warning against society’s dogged obsession with stopping aging.
