The Substance (2024)

9/10

The Substance is as subtle as a sledgehammer, but art doesn’t need to be subtle to be effective. In this gruesome satirical body horror film, writer-director Coralie Fargeat explores the universal fear of aging, skewering the commodification of women under capitalism and society’s pressure on them to reflect an impossible ideal of youth and beauty. Starring Demi Moore in a career-best performance, the film is thoughtful, funny, tragic, and terrifying enough to scare viewers into aging gracefully.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is a faded movie star—an image visualized in a clever opening sequence, which depicts her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame eroding over time—who now hosts a Jane Fonda-like aerobics TV show. On her 50th birthday, her slimy producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) fires her because he wants a younger woman who can attract more viewers and increase profits. That same day, Elisabeth is distracted while seeing workers taking down a billboard of her and ends up in a car accident. Needless to say, she is in a vulnerable state when a young male nurse hands her a flash drive advertising “The Substance” and a handwritten note reading, “It changed my life.”

The Substance is a black-market serum that promises users a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of themselves. Elisabeth injects herself with the activator serum and a separate being literally emerges from inside her, with Elisabeth’s consciousness transferred into the new body. This is Sue (Margaret Qualley), a younger version of Elisabeth with perfectly smooth skin, perky breasts—actually prosthetics worn by Qualley—and a firm body. Sue auditions to replace Elisabeth as the host of a new TV show and Harvey immediately hires her, propelling Sue to stardom. Of course, there’s a catch.

Sue needs to inject daily “stabilizer” fluid extracted from Elisabeth’s spine, and must transfer her consciousness into the other body every seven days. “The balance must be respected,” we are told. Inevitably, Sue can’t resist the temptation to extend her stay in the younger body by drawing more stabilizer fluid from Elisabeth, causing accelerating aging each time Elisabeth reawakens. As the mysterious voice Elisabeth orders The Substance from tells her, “What has been used on one side is lost on the other side. There's no going back.” Despite sharing one consciousness, Elisabeth and Sue grow to resent each other, until Sue decides she wants to stay Sue permanently. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this doesn’t end well.

Much of the buzz around The Substance has centred on Moore, deservedly so. She delivers an astonishing performance as Elisabeth in which she fully exposes herself to the viewer, physically and emotionally. Other veteran actresses might have balked at nude scenes in which Elisabeth examines all the perceived flaws in her body, from wrinkles to cellulite. But Moore dives head-on into the anxieties and insecurities women in particular are made to feel with advancing age, effectively conveying Elisabeth’s vulnerability.

Not only that, Moore is willing to don layers of makeup and prosthetics to depict her character’s accelerated aging and degeneration. Fargeat displays a clear David Cronenberg influence, particularly his superior remake of The Fly. In showing the physical degradation of the human body, The Substance will remind many viewers of Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle in that film—and that’s before the grotesque final act, which features imagery arguably even more disgusting and horrific than Goldblum’s Brundlefly. It’s pure nightmare fuel.

This is not a film for the squeamish. I can’t stress enough that you should avoid watching it if you aren’t able to handle gore, because this movie serves it up to such an extreme that it borders on a splatter film, particularly in the climax. For all the attention the Terrifier movies have received for their gore, with reports of audience members fainting and vomiting, I personally found The Substance even more disturbing because its gore comes not from violence, but the monstrous perversion of the human form.

Unlike splatter films, and reflecting its influence from Cronenbergian body horror, all that gore actually serves a dramatic purpose in The Substance. Audience reactions may vary. I found Elisabeth’s story tragic and pitiful, like The Fly, which is a great movie but one I rarely watch because it’s so sad. On the other hand, many viewers will find the final act so over the top it will provoke laughter. At my screening I was a few seats away from an annoying woman who laughed throughout much of the movie, which was excessive and distracting. That said, there are some grossly humorous moments even—or for some viewers, especially—in the finale.

For all its satirical elements, The Substance for me is primarily a tragedy, albeit one with a significant difference from The Fly. In that film, the body horror begins with an accident, when a fly ends up in the teleporter with Seth Brundle fusing them at the genetic level and locking in Brundle’s horrific transformation. In The Substance, on the other hand, Elisabeth has the option to stop at any time. But the lure of youthful beauty in her guise as Sue proves too powerful.

A turning point occurs when Elisabeth is preparing to go out on a date with an old high school classmate, Fred (Edward Hamilton-Clark) whom she ran across on her birthday and who told her she was “still the most beautiful girl in the world.” By this point, Elisabeth has suffered her first accelerated aging from Sue “upsetting the balance”, in the form of a withered index finger. But this is minor compared to what’s to come, and can be covered up. As Elisabeth prepares to leave, she keeps seeing the billboard of Sue outside her window and can’t help unfavourably comparing Sue’s “perfect” youthful appearance to her own physical imperfections. She keeps changing her outfit, removing and re-applying her makeup, until her insecurities get the better of her and doom this chance for happiness.

While Moore has deservedly garnered much acclaim, Qualley shouldn’t be overlooked. Her introductory scene as Sue allows her to play an older woman who finds herself in a younger body. Sue quickly gains a confidence Elisabeth lacks. But the moment things go wrong and Sue experiences negative physical effects from “upsetting the balance”, Qualley’s immediate sense of panic shows how fragile that confidence can be—and how powerful is the fear that she could lose her newfound youth.

If there’s a problem with The Substance, it’s that the lack of sublety can get overbearing at times, as if Fargeat doesn’t trust the audience to figure anything out on their own. Quaid is the biggest offender, playing Harvey (no doubt a reference to Harvey Weinstein) as an over-the-top caricature of a chauvinistic Hollywood executive, munching and slurping on prawns in extreme close-up; Elisabeth conveniently overhears a phone conversation in the men’s bathroom where Harvey says he’s firing her because she’s too old. There are some clunky lines that spell everything out for the audience, like when Sue in a moment of desperation yells “I want to be a better version of myself!” The film also runs a bit too long.

Still, the captivating plot, relatable themes, excellent lead performances, and over-the-top body horror make this a film I would recommend to horror fans and anyone else who likes a good story—as long as they have a strong stomach.