The Substance is five-star squelch
Coralie Fargeat transforms Demi Moore into a horror icon for the ages with a movie that's disgusting, fetid, grotesque... and wonderful.
Demi Moore gives us body horror with Substance
One of the scariest scenes in The Substance unfolds without a drop of blood being spilled. Fading fitness TV star1 Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has decided to go on a date with a handsome former classmate who remarked that he still found her as beautiful today as at the peak of her ingenue fame. As the time approaches, Elisabeth heads to the bathroom to reassess her outfit and make-up, only to repeatedly tweak her appearance. To our eyes, she looks completely flawless, but that’s not what she sees. The camera cuts back and forth between Elisabeth and the clock as the minutes tick by in anxiety-inducing fashion, well past the time Elisabeth was due to show up on her date. Eventually, furious with herself, she decides not to go at all.
It’s an unbearably tense scene that sums up everything writer-director Coralie Fargeat — previously responsible for the brutal 2017 movie Revenge2 — is trying to say with her debut English-language feature. This is a tale of the absurd expectations placed upon women — and especially famous women — to arrest the ageing process and maintain society-approved standards of conventional beauty. But further than that, it’s about the damage women are coerced into doing to themselves to reach the standards set, predominantly, by powerful men who have never had to worry about the right kind of facial contouring.
Elisabeth is sacked from her long-running TV gig on the day of her 50th birthday by Dennis Quaid’s loathsome exec — he’s very deliberately called Harvey. Around the same time, Elisabeth is introduced to a back alley drug with miraculous properties. Take “the substance” and you can birth a “perfect” version of yourself, in whose body you can live for a week at a time. Maintain the balance and all will be well. Desperate to return to the top, Elisabeth becomes Sue (Margaret Qualley) and, before long, she has successfully auditioned for her old job.
Just as she did in Revenge, Fargeat weaponises the idea of “male gaze” throughout The Substance, making the audience complicit in the absurd beauty standards inflicted upon Elisabeth and Sue. The Substance is obsessed with these characters’ bodies and the minute examination of them, as if the film is a living manifestation of those hideous circles trashy magazines used to put around famous women’s stretch marks and tummy rolls.
That obsession is shared by both characters. The creators of “the substance” repeatedly emphasise that “you are one”, but Elisabeth and Sue’s relationship quickly becomes a union even more febrile than the Gallagher brothers. They resent each other equally, especially when Sue’s desire to get longer than a week in control begins to exert a vampiric effect on Elisabeth — first in the form of a wizened finger and then, well, more than that.
Qualley’s performance expertly conveys the dead-eyed perfection Sue has been effectively built to project, existing as a barrage of coquettish tics without any — if you’ll pardon the pun — substance. She’s a blank slate because that’s what Elisabeth wants her to be — a bland projection of conventionally desirable features, shorn of any personality that might make her prickly.3 It’s a potentially thankless role, but Qualley embraces it with absolute commitment.
The film, though, is a showcase for Moore. It’s a role in which she channels her own turmoil at being an eternal figure of gossip — she has struggled with addiction and eating disorders, as well as tabloid speculation about cosmetic surgery — into a rage-fuelled performance of the most stomach-churning intensity. Through the lens of a woman who was once the world’s highest-paid actress, this level of self-inflicted brutality is shocking and potent. Moore never disappears into the role precisely because the fact she’s “Demi Moore”, with all of the celebrity baggage that name carries, just gives the movie another layer of sickening impact.
And impact is what The Substance has. In its first hour or so, it allows the audience to sink into its hyper-saturated world — a Fargeat hallmark — as Elisabeth and Sue jockey for position. It’s a glossy Hollywood satire with hints of waking nightmare lurking in the background. Then, something cracks and Fargeat opens the madness floodgates. Soon, there’s blood and body parts everywhere, which doesn’t even begin to explain the mayhem. It’s fair to say that Brian Yuzna and his special effects maestro Screaming Mad George would be very proud of the carnage Fargeat unleashes,
Like all of the best body horror, The Substance embraces black comedy as well as blood-soaked terror in its unchained final act. It’s arguably true that some of the film’s thematic nuance is lost through the fountains of gore, but there’s so much dark joy on show that it’s impossible not to get swept up in it all. This is the riotous chaos of a director willing to take big swings — like Cronenberg’s The Fly mixed with Peter Jackson’s horror-comedy classic Braindead.
We spend a lot of time talking about how Hollywood doesn’t take risks any more, but maybe it takes an outsider like Fargeat to come in from Europe and shuffle the deck. The Substance immediately joins the ranks of the great Tinseltown satires, powered by a bloodthirsty streak deep and jagged enough to make the esteemed maestros of horror proud. Fargeat’s movies are assaultive and guttural, delivering their messages with the fearsome aggression of a sledgehammer to the sternum. Under her directorial eye, the Hollywood bubble cracks and crumbles like the ruins of an ancient, decrepit castle — splattered with spinal fluid and arterial spray, of course.
The Substance is in UK cinemas now.
Some reviews have noted the anachronism of a character becoming A-list famous for a genre of TV show that barely exists at all in the modern day. For me, the uncanny weirdness of that just enhanced the idea of the film as a sort of eerie, grotesque parable.
A movie I found so fascinating that I wrote this deep dive into its complex spin on the rape-revenge genre over at my old blog.
In reality, Moore was dubbed “Gimme Moore” by journalists for having the temerity to request she be paid as much as her male co-stars. They just wanted her to smile and giggle like Sue does.