I knew going into Coralie Fargeat's The Substance that I would be in for a wild ride. However, nothing could prepare me for the bat-shit insane, delightfully disgusting movie I would experience over the next 2.5 hours.
The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, a once wildly popular fitness star/award-winning actress (think Jane Fonda) who is now 50 years old. She still has her own fitness TV show, but the head of the channel, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), wants a new, hot, and--especially important--young star to replace Elisabeth. He fires Elisabeth, who is devastated.
But Elisabeth learns about a mysterious "substance" from a young, eerily attractive doctor who slips her a USB stick after a hospital visit. The Substance promises that if you take it, a new, younger, better you will be created. The only catch is that the old you and the new you have to switch bodies every 7 days "without exception". Elisabeth calls the hotline on the USB device and places her order.
What follows is some of the most disgusting, evocative, and weirdly sexy body horror you could possibly imagine. Elisabeth takes the Substance and creates a devastatingly gorgeous version of herself (Margaret Qualley). This new version goes by the name "Sue" and applies for the role of Elisabeth's replacement. She is immediately hired. Sue receives fawning attention due to her looks and the new fitness show she heads up ("Pump It Up...with Sue") quickly becomes the most popular show on the channel.
Despite the fact that Sue/Elisabeth are supposed to switch bodies every 7 days, Sue begins "stealing" time from Elisabeth. This results in Elisabeth looking a little more old and gnarled each time Sue finally allows Elisabeth to wake up and take her turn. Keep in mind that Sue and Elisabeth are the same person--they share the same brain and same memories, so Sue fucking over Elisabeth is really just Elisabeth fucking over Elisabeth. But even both Sue and Elisabeth have to be reminded that they are the same goddamned person by the guy on the other end of the Substance hotline every time they call to complain about the other one.
If the themes explored in The Substance sound a bit "on the nose", well, yes. This is the kind of movie that blows past subtly to make its point. It reminded me of a fairytale. A very modern, very gross fairytale. And the movie leans HARD into body horror, in ways both large and small. The entire film is gross and unsettling, From a scene of Harvey eating shrimp in glorious closeup near the beginning of the movie, to the many, many, MANY scenes of needles being injected into infected skin, The Substance is truly not for the faint of heart. And the climax of the film is basically if Cronenberg's The Fly had a very disgusting baby with Peter Jackson's Dead Alive.
In addition to being gross, The Substance is also very funny and very sad. It's so over the top, that it's often hilarious even at its grossest parts. But the core of the film, which is that women are taught that the only "lovable" thing about them is their youth and beauty, is devastating. There's a scene where Elisabeth is asked out by an old classmate of hers, Fred, who believes her to be the most beautiful woman in the world and is struck speechless when she agrees to go to dinner with him. But as she tries to leave her apartment to meet him, she sees a billboard of Sue and becomes disgusted by her current state of being old and ugly (obviously, this is Demi Moore, who is gorgeous...but you have to understand that this perception is from the character's warped viewpoint). She furiously wipes her makeup off and stands up poor Fred.
As over-the-top as the gore and body horror is, The Substance is dead-on in its portrayal of how women are treated as they age, particularly women in show business. The core of hurt at the center of the film is so honest and I can't imagine a woman alive who wouldn't recognize those feelings of external and internal shame at not being pretty or sexy or youthful enough. We intellectually know it's bullshit, but the forces of capitalism, misogyny, and media are so strong that it's hard not to judge ourselves and judge other women.
In addition to being about beauty standards, The Substance is also about addiction. Even though Sue is only hurting herself each time she steal extra time from Elisabeth, she cannot help herself. She is addicted to her beauty and the power and attention that comes with it. When Elisabeth, now a gnarled old woman with white hair and age spots, calls the Substance hotline to complain about Sue, they tell her that she can stop, but her body will remain in its current state. She says, dejectedly, that she can't stop. She can't imagine life as herself now without the benefit of being able to spend time as Sue. The sunk-cost fallacy of her own damaging behavior and the bone-deep fear of living without her drug of youth and beauty is familiar to anyone who has been addicted to, well, a substance. Even the name of the film brings to mind terms like "substance abuse" and "substance use disorder"...and, in fact, Elisabeth has the option to moderate her intake. If she follows the protocol to switch bodies every week, the balance will be maintained and she will be able to enjoy the benefits of being Sue. Any alcoholic or drug user that tells themselves "just 2 beers tonight" will understand how laughable it is to be limited to "just a little" of the drug of our choice. Oh, and those scenes of injections into infected skin definitely reminded me of Requiem for a Dream.
All three leads--Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid--are SO incredibly good here. Dennis Quaid leans into being a misogynist who is both nasty and pathetic. The joke is that he is over 50 and gross (way grosser than Elisabeth), but since he has all the power he can do what he wants. Margaret Qualley is not only drop-dead gorgeous, she's also able to play mean and selfish really well. She is simply a younger Elisabeth stealing time from herself and feeling disgust at her older self. Who among us hasn't felt that internal prick of self-loathing as we get older and see those wrinkles and sags form? It's only human! And Demi Moore is heartbreakingly vulnerable as a woman who has built her career and wealth with her body, only for time to do its thing and decrease her value (in the eyes of society/the media) even as she remains fit and beautiful beyond her years. This is the definition of a vanity-free role for Moore as the camera lingers on her wrinkles and less-than-perfect butt (only in comparison to Qualley's supernaturally perfect butt), but also as she gets more and more desperate as she begins borrowing time from herself, thus causing herself to become even older and even uglier.
The Substance is a hell of a movie. When I say it's gross, I am not kidding. If you have issues with needles in particular, or just a weak stomach in general, probably best to skip this one. But if body horror appeals to you or you're just willing to take a risk on a movie that will probably make your jaw drop in horror and astonishment, it's worth checking out. It will very likely be on my top 10 of the year.
Grade: A
