Just a few months after its Cannes premiere—where it garnered a 13-minute standing ovation and won Coralie Fargeat the award for Best Screenplay—The Substance oozes its way into American theaters, courtesy of stateside distributor Mubi. A feminist spin on body horror with its satirical crosshairs aimed at Hollywood’s never-ending emphasis on youth and beauty, The Substance is right up my alley, balancing visceral gross-out gore effects with ferocious social commentary. (There were no walkouts in my screening, but plenty of nauseous groans, especially over the last thirty minutes.) There’s also no doubt this is a monster movie, as made clear by an enormous, pulsating onscreen title toward the end reading Monstrous ElisaSue—a label that makes a bit more sense in the context of the movie’s nonstop in-your-face provocation.
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Writer: Coralie Fargeat
Producers: Tim Bevan, Coralie Fargeat, Eric Fellner
Cinematography: Benjamin Kračun
Editors: Jérôme Eltabet, Coralie Fargeat, Valentin Féron
Music: Raffertie
Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Edward Hamilton Clark, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage, Christian Erickson, Robin Greer, Tom Morton, Hugo Diego Garcia, Joseph Balderrama, Yann Bean
Runtime: 141 minutes
Countries of Origin: UK/France
International Premiere: May 19, 2024 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Release: September 20, 2024
The word “courageous” is thrown around too much when describing actors’ performances, but the adjective perfectly applies to Demi Moore in The Substance. She plays aging celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle, host of an exercise show who realizes her prime years are behind her (especially in Los Angeles, where one’s prime typically ends by the age of forty, and arguably earlier for women). Elisabeth discovers an illicit drug that supposedly unleashes a “new, better” you. After receiving mysterious packages of “activators,” “stabilizers,” and other weird toxic substances, Elisabeth tries them out on her own body and starts gestating a younger doppelgänger (Margaret Qualley), who adopts the quaint name of Sue. Before long, Sue has taken over Elisabeth’s morning TV show and commandeered her life, but that’s only the start of “the substance’s” absolutely batshit consequences.
Fargeat (acting as director, writer, producer, and co-editor) makes it impossible to miss the movie’s point: namely, that the media industry’s absurd expectations around eternal youth and beauty (especially for women) lead to destructive, mind- and body-altering impacts. This theme would be hard to miss with The Substance‘s slimy, blood-drenched scenes of bodies breaking down and behaving erratically; the less you know the better, but suffice it to say that strange orifices and protuberant organs will eventually show up in the unlikeliest places. (Think the ending of the 1989 body-horror oddity Society…if you dare.) But The Substance isn’t content to let its gore effects do all the talking, so it adds blunt and didactic dialogue in which despicable men treat women like objects and callously assess their physical appearance. Much of this dialogue is repeated via voiceover throughout the film, making the themes even more unmistakeable, and a series of false endings reiterate the point, padding out the movie’s runtime to almost two and a half hours. Obviously Fargeat’s outrage and adamancy are well-placed, but for those who want a little more mystery and subtlety from their films’ commentary, The Substance can be exasperatingly obvious.
For as glitzy and bombastic as The Substance‘s formal style is, it also includes some questionable aesthetic choices. With split-second edits and disorienting camera angles, the movie is reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000), which also deglamorizes its aging star (in that case, Ellen Burstyn), to totally different ends. (Some may consider that a flattering comparison, but I don’t think Aronofsky’s turn-of-the-millennium drama ages very well.) The Substance has a habit of muddying its time period: its technologies and exterior scenes are clearly set in the modern day, but certain set and costume design choices evoke the 1980s. Arguably, the film weakens its commentary by placing it in ambiguous time period, making it appear less timely. Certain aspects also resort to easy horror-movie tropes, like the predictable, abrasive electronic noises that populate the soundtrack and some lapses in logic and consistency that lazily push the plot along. (I hate to be the person to complain about plot holes—usually something I don’t really care about—but they become distracting when they defy the characters’ supposed motivations.)
In the end, though, it doesn’t matter: this (literally and figuratively) drenches the sexist entertainment industry in blood and guts and viscera. Both its unrestrained gore (especially in a jaw-dropping climax) and over-the-top comedy are admirable expressions of fury against Hollywood’s injustices. And while the formal glitz isn’t quite my style, I’d rather have a movie take too many stylistic chances than the alternative; in other words, better to be strident than boring. Finally, for all of The Substance‘s provocations, Moore’s performance still anchors it as a human movie, with a kind of bitter sympathy for its protagonist and her unease at growing older in a setting where aging is a crime. As Elisabeth Sparkle, Moore could accurately be described as courageous, but more importantly, she’s vulnerable and touching—a bit of a miracle when she’s surrounded by so much carnage.
by Matthew Cole Levine
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