The Stuff We're Feeding Off - Reviewing "The Substance"

Ah, the woman’s search for eternal beauty… The trope as old as time has always been a grab bag for storytellers, but in the last couple of years it has been seeing a true revival explosion, especially in horror. The wish to hold on to the one source of power granted to her in a world in which she is sexualized and measured by her youthfulness, fertility and sex-appeal is naturally a huge source of anxiety. Efforts to stop her body from aging and decaying, to appear desirable and pretty, not to lose “it” and not to succumb to cruel reality, and all this eventually leading to her self-destruction, are all themes organic to horror. Add to it a little snip snip here, a nip tuck there, a little blood, a couple of needles into the flesh, some body modification and you have yourself the perfect template for a class A body horror story that reminds us that ultimately we are nothing but meat. Books like Natural Beauty (Ling Ling Huang), #thighgap (Chandler Morrison) or Rouge (Mona Awad) discovered and reinterpreted the trope for horror and so did movies such as American Mary (2012) or the infamously bad (but we love that, don’t we?) Doctor Carver: Conjuring the Plastic Surgeon by lovely Lisa Warren. And so did Coralie Fargeat in her breathtaking second feature The Substance (2024).

The latter is an impressive explosion of color and visually combines elements of the low budget splatter with high-quality filming and famous actors. It's important to describe this movie as splatter, because apparently the description "sarcastic body horror" didn't do much for the audiences, and during the showing I went to, a daytime showing in a smaller Yorck Kino with small rooms, five people walked out. So, let's call it what it is and not try to lure in more clueless people who will feel cheated by the genre tag.

That being said, if it's your thing, or you can readily tolerate too much gore - this movie is a blast! Despite not bringing anything new to the table, except maybe the speculative element, it proves that there's truly no better place to use body horror than for cosmetic horror and that body horror can be super entertaining. Don't mind me moaning about its lack of an original premise, you can't have enough films about the pressure put on women to preserve a certain image of youth, desirability, fertility, unrealistic beauty standards and each one is welcome in my book.

 

What stops?... 

...asks fading TV fitness star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) when her also not so young boss Harvey, played impeccably by Dennis Quaid, allows himself to point out that, "at fifty, it stops." And goes on to fire her. Being someone who capitalized on her beauty all her life and now consumed by insecurities and anxieties about her looks and age, Elisabeth resorts to an unusual "solution": The Substance, an innovative procedure in which you can create a perfected and young copy of yourself. It goes without saying, there's a hook - you can never be awake at the same time as your copy with whom you will rotate weekly and you should never forget that the two of you are one, and act accordingly. Elisabeth and her perfect version Sue don't and both of her versions will fall prey to their combined greed and vanity.

This film starts as revolting as they come - the "Substance"s procedure is painful and stomach-churning. As an aside, it is also entirely shot with special effects and no CGI at all - the only honorable way to film body horror, we like that! So imagine my surprise (and delight) when, after a certain turning point in the story, it got even more gory, turning the whole ordeal into a veritable splatter fest unafraid to make fun of itself, making me giggle uncontrollably, but also making some of the other audience members walk out 😢. This film goes buck crazy and silly and transgresses every boundary an award-winning film should respect.

The premise, the so to say novum which is the new cell division technique, does not ring very convincing to me. Although Elisabeth later on admits that she basically hates herself, sees Sue as the best part of her and thus wants to keep her alive and going, I can't really see the benefit in creating someone else to whom I'll transfer all my hopes and dreams while I sit at home and watch TV (Ooops, is it now obvious that I don't have children?). Let's not be too judgy though.

Besides the obvious critique on beauty standards, creation, the reasons we procreate, and generational conflicts are also big themes of the movie, and although not always relatable, the motivation of the lead character is deserving sympathy. I mean, take for example the mirror scene with Demi Moore which is painful to watch. In it, Elisabeth is preparing for a date with an old school friend, the only person who leaves a genuine impression in this movie, and in a violent surge of insecurity, she keeps returning to the mirror to change something on her makeup or clothing to the degree that in the end she realizes she will never look good enough or even satisfactory to herself and decides to ghost her date. It is painful because it is so real, I totally saw myself in her shoes, but it's also hilarious. I have never been a fan of Demi Moore, I just don't think she is a very good actress, but she was the perfect cast for this role and the movie brought her closer to me.

Excessive and not relatable on the other hand are the workout scenes with Sue, played sensationally by Margaret Qualley, in which she is objectified and sexualized in such extremely extreme ways, that she's basically not sexy anymore because it's just so over the top.

The Substance offers lots of such scenes which accurately reflect the double standard aging women face day by day, and maybe even older people in general. I mean, we're all getting there if we're lucky, no need to kick anyone while they're already down, literally for this movie.

I will make good use the bank holiday tomorrow to re-watch this gem with my sister and niece and I've got my fingers crossed for zero walkouts!