Film Review – The Substance (Second Take)

September 20th, 2024 | POSTED BY Sarah Ksiazek

There is no escaping the pairing of body horror and The Substance (2024) since its premiere at Cannes.  It is impossible to look up anything about its premise or even watch the trailer and not see the term.  According to Wikipedia, body horror “is a subgenre of horror fiction that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or to any other creature.”  The Substance strolls lightly into body horror, and then by the end, it just fully immerses its characters in it, awash in blood, disfigurements, and grossness. 

The first few minutes of The Substance are simplicity itself.  It plainly defines what “The Substance” does using a cracked-open egg. Then, it introduces Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) peripherally, using the evolution of her Hollywood Star over the years. 

When we finally meet Elisabeth, she is making a fitness show, her bread and butter, which has made her an icon.  Of course, she looks gorgeous and fit, but there is one problem: she is getting older, which is a death sentence in Hollywood.  While cooling down in an unoccupied men’s room in the studio, she overhears Harvey (Dennis Quaid), a head honcho at the production company, going on and on about how Elisabeth’s lifespan as a fitness girl has ended and the company is searching for a new Elisabeth Sparkle.  Little by little, Elisabeth sees the tell-tale signs of her Hollywood ending.  The final straw is the ripping down of her billboard, which the sight of causes her to crash her car.  She meets a strikingly handsome young nurse at the ER who tips her off to The Substance. 

Falling victim to the voices in her head telling her she is not pretty or young enough, The Substance appears to be a godsend for Elisabeth, even though she does not comprehend what she is getting herself into with it.  Alarm bells should have gone off in Elisabeth’s head as she went to retrieve the system or just opening its package.  The system’s directions are vague, but the warnings and “laws” are direct and understandable.  Elisabeth starts The Substance and spawns Sue (Margaret Qualley). 

The trade-off of The Substance is that each version of yourself only gets a week at a time to live out in the world, and you both are one.  With the appearance of Sue, Elisabeth gets a new, younger version of herself, but getting that taste of youth again can make one eager for more, no matter the cost.  What is not apparent immediately is that Sue and Elisabeth have the same history and memories at Sue’s beginning, but Sue is no longer Elisabeth after her arrival.  They don’t share minds.  It is essentially a divergence of one person into two, but there is no crossover. 

Other than the in-your-face grotesqueness of The Substance, the filming style is not something seen in films with a wide release recently.  Writer and director Coralie Fargeat leans heavily on close-ups (even uncomfortable ones), point-of-view camera work, and the ASMR trend.  The style is very in your face, placing the viewer front and center with all the beautiful details of Sue, the perceived decline of Elisabeth, and the loud and gross Harvey.  Every element of the film works well together, from the production design of Elisabeth’s all-white tile bathroom illuminating the visceral effects of The Substance to the costume design of Sue’s exercise gear that is more for showing off her assets than being appropriate workout clothes.

Of course, the film is a statement on our obsession with staying and looking young.  In desperation to cling to her career and stay relevant, Elisabeth makes a choice that gives her what she wants but not exactly how she wants it.  She still has to exist once every other week in her body; that has not changed; in fact, it has deteriorated.  She also has to realize that her person does not get to be young and successful; her other version does.

Other than some graphic body horror associated with starting The Substance, the real gorefest does not begin until the film’s third act.  It is in this portion of the film that everything goes balls-to-the-wall crazy, and this is what audiences are either going to love or hate.  The desperation of Sue and Elisabeth comes to a head (maybe even multiple heads), and it is not pretty.  Coralie Fargeat must not subscribe to the saying, “less is more,” and this film is evidence of it.  She throws everything she has at her characters, Sue and Elisabeth.  The result is an outlandish, gory, and comical end to Fargeat’s treatise on vanity. 

The Substance is, without a doubt, the best film to experience in a packed theatre so far this year.  It is a full-blown dive into lunacy during the last act, and audiences should not miss it.  While the ending goes off the deep end, there is an admiration for this fever dream of a film.

Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, Featured, Margaret Qualley, Mubi, The Substance