The Substance is the grotesque movie our grotesque Ozempic-frenzied society deserves
The Substance is overlong and overblown. It is a grotesque spectacle of violence, gore and body-horror. It is voyeuristically explicit, at times downright nonsensical and ends with a repulsive denouement that is so outrageously disgusting it veers from horror to comedy.
The film stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, and set critics tongues wagging at Cannes earlier this year where writer-director Coralie Fargeat scooped the Best Screenplay award for her pull-no-punches takedown of society’s subjugation of women’s bodies.
The Substance is, at its core, a modern retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray (indeed a large portrait of a glowing Demi Moore features heavily); a horror-anthology premise dressed up with blood, guts and stretched out over 140 minutes. But it’s not bad. It may even be great… that is if you can stomach it.
Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, the host of a popular aerobics TV show who is unceremoniously fired on her 50th birthday. She’s too old.
But, in hospital after a car accident, Elisabeth is presented with an offer of ‘The Substance’, a serum that, when injected, creates a younger and more beautiful version of the user.
And lo, out of Elisabeth’s spine emerges Margaret Qualley in a sequence even the most hardened body-horror aficionados will find toe-curling. Sue, as the ‘new’ Elisabeth calls herself, bursts onto the scene — literally — and is an instant success, swiftly securing a fitness show of her own after responding to a newspaper ad reading: ‘COULD YOU BE THE NEW ELISABETH SPARKLE?’
But as with all too-good-to-be-true elixirs, there’s a catch. The two bodies, the old and the young, must switch their singular consciousness every seven days, no exceptions. (The switching process involves the transfer of bodily fluids so if you didn’t have a needle aversion before watching The Substance you may have one afterward.)
Sue and Elisabeth are repeatedly reminded they are one person and they must ‘respect the balance’ but the temptation for Sue to ignore Elisabeth quickly proves too great and she starts to take over.
As Sue’s star gets ever brighter, so Elisabeth withers away into a decrepit old crone who can scarcely look at herself in the mirror.
The movie’s message is basic and obvious: Women will go to ever-increasing depths of self-harm in order to maintain the image society expects of them (and that they subsequently expect of themselves).
Some of Fargeat’s script choices are also eye-rollingly basic: Calling the leering producer ‘Harvey’ is a bit on-the-nose, of course the fitness shows have all-male production crews and the decision to show gratuitous female nudity but no male is also a bit self-serving (one wonders the backlash if a man had directed this…)
But the obviousness is for a purpose.
Fargeat’s shoots the fitness scenes like highly-charged soft-porn: It’s Eric Prydz’s Call On Me video on steroids (or should that be Viagra?)
Fargeat’s shoves Qualley’s gyrating body into our faces again and again and then swiftly slaps down the audience with another blood transfusion or vile bodily egress. You won’t leave the cinema either hungry or horny, I guarantee.
Fargeat hammers home her message: Bodies like this come at severe personal cost and are always on the edge of breaking down (nose bleeds feature very heavily).
And Moore, having spent more than half her life in the Hollywood limelight, knows better than almost anyone the pressure of being a female celebrity.
She shines as Elisabeth, throwing herself into a role that at once acknowledges her own age (although it is telling Moore is 61 to Elisabeth’s 50) while also railing against industry pressures. She bares all, both mentally and physically, throwing herself into the role of a glowing older woman who nonetheless is consumed by self-loathing and the aging process.
Qualley is equally brilliant as Sue, going toe-to-toe with Moore (the script conspires so that they do share some screen time) for every beat as the ‘rival’ versions quickly grow to hate, but also depend on, each other.
The Substance arrives in UK cinemas on Friday with Mubi giving the movie their widest ever release and there is bound to be a Saltburn-esque reaction, although there are no needle drops as infectious as Murder on the Dancefloor.
(God help us if The Substance should ever land on a mainstream streaming channel.)
The marketing has leaned heavily into the extreme reactions that the body-horror scenes provoke in audiences and there are several of them; including an assault so vicious it makes known arthouse agent provocateur Gaspar Noe look tame.
But, at a time when Botox injections have become de rigueur among celebrities and fat-loss injection Ozempic is all-the-rage, despite frequent reports of it causing users to lose control of their bowels, maybe Fargeat’s grotesque and loathsome movie has come at just the right time for us as a society.
It’s not for the squeamish. And maybe that’s the point, age-defying beauty rarely is. It’s the movie we deserve.
