The Substance confronts Hollywood age, beauty standards with body horror, dark humour
EVERYTHING comes with a price as there is no such thing as a free lunch, especially when that free lunch horrifically gives birth to a version of you that is 30 years younger, from out of your back, no less.
Fading Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) learns this lesson the hard way. After being fired as the host of a TV aerobics show on her 50th birthday, with the producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) saying it was due to her age. Elisabeth is then involved in a car accident.
At the hospital, a male nurse examines her spine and cryptically says she is the perfect candidate. Upon being discharged, Elisabeth discovers a USB stick with the words “The Substance” in her coat. On it, a video advertises the substance as a serum capable of replicating human genetics to generate a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of the user it is injected into.
Though initially dismissive, she gives in to the pressure of wanting to relive her youthful days. After ordering and receiving the drug, she injects herself with it, causing painful convulsions before resulting in a 20-year-old version of her ripping through and out Elisabeth’s back. Elisabeth and the younger her (Margaret Qualley), who names herself Sue, now have to follow the rules of the substance.
The main rule being only one of them can be “active” while the other lies “dormant”. The active one has a seven-day limit before they have to transfer their consciousness to the dormant. If the cycle is broken, there will be dire consequences.
As The Substance is a body horror film, the rules are inevitably broken.
Just pump it up
It took eight months but we finally have the best horror film of 2024. The body horror maestros of old such as Brian Yuzna and David Cronenberg would be proud with what writer-director Coralie Fargeat does in The Substance.
Rather than making a purely exploitative horror film with gratuitous amounts of gore and bodily secretions with nothing to say, Fargeat’s film is an effective, satirical look at Hollywood’s sexism and ageism involving women and its effects on them.
To make the film’s feel closer to reality, Fargeat uses cinematography and music in a way atypical for horror films to capture the differences between Elisabeth and Sue, along with how they develop throughout the film’s events.
During the early sequences with Elisabeth, there is a nauseating amount of close-ups, dull colour correction and lethargic, fixed camera positions and angles, often with experimental scores. By the chaotic end, everything is pushed so far to the extreme, past the realm of hyperrealism that even death metal band Cannibal Corpse’s I xxx Blood makes an appearance.
For her “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” counterpart, Sue’s scenes are colourful and bright, with different, electric camera angles such as her breakout TV performance backed by Endor’s 2019 club anthem Pump It Up.
Layered horror
The Substance hyperrealism exists in the middle of a Venn diagram of parody, satire, comedy and horror. At times, the lines are blurred such as the depressing body dysmorphia sequence of Elisabeth trying and failing to get ready for a date as she keeps being reminded she is not as physically appealing as Sue.
Fargeat’s balance of the film’s message and the absurdity of everything else on-screen, which she commits to in the most extreme definition of “body horror” is masterclass, particularly her use of practical effects for a lot of the transformations and even in the ludicrous third act, when Moore (without spoilers) has to physically act under, let us say, a lot of “impediments”.
Though Qualley is good in the role, Moore is the film’s true selling point. From being a Hollywood star eyed for lead roles through the 80s and 90s before quietly fading into supporting roles, The Substance has Moore showing she still has the substance despite her age, which might be what real world Hollywood considers horrifying.
The Substance is streaming on Mubi.