The Substance (2024)

Director: Coralie Fargeat

Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat

Cast: Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, Margaret Qualley as Sue, Dennis Quaid as Harvey, Gore Abrams as Oliver, Hugo Diego Garcia as Diego, Phillip Schurer as Mr. Scream, Joseph Balderrama as Craig Silver

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The best opening to this review came from the male cinema usher introducing this film. In my sickest glee, but sincerely as well for its director-writer Coralie Fargeat, this film has reached a wide audience for a director whose debut was only the film before Revenge (1917), a subversion of the controversial rape-revenge genre from the French director who worked on short films beforehand.  Her follow-up The Substance, seven years later, could be seen in multiplexes like the Odeon here in the United Kingdom, but I found it more practical to go to a boutique cinema. Even if part of a trend to sell cinemas as an experience, with more lavish food options and the ability to order for this or the bar during the opening trailers per screening, it allows one a little bit more access to more non-mainstream films, and the ability to sit on comfy sofas which, even as someone who doesn't mind the traditional cinema seats, I can live more with. This also allows the experiences to have greater weight, in the additional details such as staff that are friendly and seem to enjoy their work. You can learn of the patron, because they accidentally didn't get a spoon, eating their ice cream with their hands than asking for a utensil, or that this friendliness added the best punch line for The Substance where the male usher, a guy who clearly went to the gym but with our British sense of affability, warned the patron. That, if anyone came here to see the film for its buzz but didn't see the trailer or knew it was a body horror movie, they were in for something unexpected. I was aware, and warned myself, but didn't expect how The Substance turned out to be either, so that warning even added a punch line for me to make the viewing experience even better, something you wouldn't have gotten at a multiplex.

The Substance came from a Cannes Film Festival in 2024 which helped me feel reinvigorated in being a cineaste after a sense of malaise and personal depression which pushed me out of going to the cinema often for near three years. It was among a list of films just in the official competition, even if contentious in reaction like Francis Ford-Coppola's Megalopolis (2024), which all felt they were made with a sense of them being films made individuals who desired to bring their premises to the screen, films which even if a few were miserable failures would linger in memory and worth preserving, in the ideal if they all had virtues, years after. The Substance had an additional layer, in not only a body horror genre film getting into the Official Competition, but how it was the "return" for Demi Moore, the Hollywood actress of St. Elmo's Fire (1985) to G.J. Jane (1997) taking a bold step into this genre. The film itself is proudly of its body horror mould, which is something spectacular if needs to be considered in how, with a lot of mainstream publications covering the film because of Moore, there was a lot of eyes on a filmmaker whose first film caught the attention for genre and horror fans more. For starters, there is the danger to oversimplify its themes of objectification and commercialisation of women's bodies, and especially in terms of youth, as the film complicates it. Misogyny and these ideals are the catalyst to the film's main plot, where former film star and TV exercise show host Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is fired from her career by Dennis Quaid's grotesque TV station executive for being over her fifties, wishing to replace her with a new, nubile female host who is to be between twenty to thirty. There is however a lot more nuisance that can be lost if we just jump on the themes as they are without taking in what Fargeat also as the screenwriter adds to complicate this.

The objectification by creepy old men, or Quaid eating shrimp in one of the grossest moments in a film where someone regurgitates a breast, is just the push into a work with more complexity as Sparkle finds herself after a car crash introduced to the titular substance, a toxic green chemical which duplicates a younger version of herself dubbed Sue (Margaret Qualley) from her own body. It becomes as much her own conflict with her age and body dysmorphia, with even the broad caricatures of Quaid and most of the male cast telling within itself. It is a film of sleekness, with a bouncy Hi-RNG score by Raffertie and bold primary colours. Fargeat as a female director, who also co-edited the film to have the intensity of cuts as this film can  also have, crosses a line too that would be rightly criticised from male filmmakers of fetishising Qualley's body including her lips, let alone the nudity, in lurid close-ups. There are layers of pop artificiality here that even extends to the depiction of misogyny, where the TV executive's gross gender objectification is so comically ridiculous, with the finale at a New Years Eve TV show with kids in the audience yet nude exotic dangers onstage, that the caricatures in generally show how old and prehistoric these ideas are, to the point these weird gender beliefs of women come off more twisted for how ridiculous they are. Most of the men come off as immature children who never grew up in their beliefs in women, and in a world where a political figure like JD Vance rightly get hung and drawn online for old comments about "crazy cat ladies" not deserving political influence, the kind of thing you would expect from immature boys that thought cooties were real, you see how this attitude to sexism from men needs to be spoofed like this to get the point more sharply across than take it as severely.

A sincere "feminist" story of objectification would be useless, and digested in empty think pieces, where a film this more complicated in tone and proudly embracing the explicit practical effects forces you to think a lot more hard. Because it was more an explicit horror film, with the ending matching the likes of Society (1989) and Screaming Mad George's infamous "shunting" practical effects in terms of eyebrow raising sights, there was a danger of this being dismissed, but the fact that it managed to find itself in this interesting place as a big new film for 2024, with a significant choice as its female lead, without losing that edge. It is among those interesting "art house horror films" I always love, but this is the first one where, rather than David Cronenberg eventually, the tone eventually starts to fold its serious themes not in subtle moments of introspection, but the exaggerated perverseness that you would more likely find in a Street Trash (1987) on a significantly higher budget, those crop of divisive and lurid films' attitude to jaw dropping and gross visual spectacle, alongside the poppy and at times flair to the images, being used to convey the serious message that this has. This takes infamous moments like the "shunting" of Society, the man melting into a toilet in Street Trash or the fetishishtic body prosthetics of so many eighties horror films, including Cronenberg films despite their moments of cerebral coldness, to this really uncomfortable idea of women being objectified and objectifying themselves, not playing it safe when it can be so easy, as I could accidentally have done as a male viewer, to have a cretinous and oversimplify view which would be offensive to female viewers who could find so much more nuisance in the material.

It was a newspaper piece, a Guardian interview with Demi Moore herself for the film, which gave the film more weight when I eventually saw the film¹. She came to The Substance with no knowledge of the body horror genre¹, but developed an interest with the subject for reasons which added interesting flourishes to her performance and the final film which I kept in mind for the viewing. One of the most prominent is how this becomes a war between the older Elizabeth Sparkle and her young idealised self Sue as the story progresses, with Moore noting how even if with the chance to relive a better life as a young woman again, Sue takes the job as the new sexy aerobic star and kowtows to the same misogynistic creeps who fired Sparkle in the first place, happy to such up to the same people for a sliver of attention. The Substance itself, playing into the central conflict, is promoted by the unseen creators' advertising with the caveat that even if two people are created from the cell duplication process, they are the same person and should not forget this. They must have seven days each per their rotas, with the other staying in a semi coma with food intravenously sustaining them and the spinal fluid of Elizabeth required to keep Sue stabilised. Even with this distinct logic, playing into an aesthetic of a new anti-aging cosmetic with the substance's slick and minimalistic packaging, there is a more arcane nature to the premise. I can easily imagine this as an old fairy tale from old Europe, where even if cultural and time differences were to be found, themes even if added with future audience perspective visible within the central theme of how, like so many fairy tales and Monkey's Paw/morality horror stories, the downfall is rarely because the magical/unnatural item is inherently the cause, but because it eventually gets abused or the worst sides of people ruin the balance.

This is where a psychological edge plays out where the real horror lies in the schism in Elizabeth's mind, the idea Sue is still her even if they seemingly are different people. A story exists where she and Sue can co-exist, can defy natural laws of aging, and have a happy conclusion, but the conflict and the horror of this genre film itself, even if spurned by the misogyny of men and ageism, is the self inflicted desire for personal attention Sparkle was infected with when she came into stardom and could not purge herself of when the fame ends. Her younger self, as Demi Moore realised in that Guardian interview, is trapped in the need for fame and glamour, willing to still follow the empty lifestyle and praises of gross old men, and in her need to do so, starts to abuse the contract to the point it physically starts to age Elizabeth. The real horror here, not the icky prosthetics, is when Elizabeth started to feel bored and depressed, jobless, even in a luxury apartment earned from her fame and stuck in front of a TV. Food, one of the few things not considered a taboo like sex, is effectively a more socially acceptable narcotic for depression, and some of the body horror is Coralie Fargeat as much showing its preparation and mess in a grotesque form, including the least expected place a chicken drumstick can be found as a sick gag scene. Those moments, including Elizabeth not finding happiness with the one nice guy, a goofy if sweet older high school friend, when she decides not to go on a date is legitimately sad and the real terror of the film. Stuck with her youth glaring at her outside on a billboard, it uses the lack of subtlety of horror cinema's visual form more effectively, in how youth in culture is used and fetished, turning into a plague for older people to feel trapped within aging bodies.

The film escalates to the absurd levels to contrast this without losing these themes, and this is where I also have to praise the two female leads for their commitment, as The Substance has to juggle these serious moments to the fact both actresses are going to be within extensive prosthetic body suits by the ending. Margaret Qualley was someone I had barely registered in films I had seen before 2024, but argubly 2024 could be her year as an MVP for me, least one of them, in terms of an actor with an incredible range in all four films I have seen in 2024 at the cinema up to The Substance. Including Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things (2023, but January 2024 British theatrical release) and Kind of Kindness (2024), and Ethan Coen's Drive-Away Dolls (2024), within a year I have seen Qualley show a level of elasticity and ability to shift roles within three different directors, from the eccentric accented comedy role with Coen to Lanthimos' idiosyncratic duo, that makes me now want to see her have a successful career with a lot of awards involved. Starting off with a dancer's background and having a link to Hollywood's past, as the daughter of Andie MacDowell, she had started long before 2024, but this is a run of four films that impressed me, more so as with The Substance, you also have to factor in her comfort in being able to do a role as with Sue. Whether in skin-tight Lycra or full nudity, to be able to be hyper-sexualised onscreen would have been a challenge, taking the fake artificiality of her character to its extreme alongside all the primary colours and arch lustiness.

Demi Moore is also taking risks for this too, playing the polar opposite in Elizabeth Sparkle, feeling like an abrupt and amazing inclusion of a huge veteran Hollywood actor in a film with the level of explicitness with full commitment fully felt in her performance, her vulnerability in the Elizabeth character as pointed. There is a shade of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Robert Altman's psychodrama of pitting the real rivalry between an older Betty Davis and Joan Crawford against each other, but unlike the "Hagsploitation" movement which came out of its success, which is dubious in a negative sounding way in how it used older actresses from classic Hollywood cinema, Moore and her character Elizabeth Sparkle are incredibly sympathetic, whilst Margaret Qualley plays the young evil Betty Davis tormenting the older. The one moment where Moore channels a Joan Crawford-like mania, when Sue was already abusing their relationship to harmful effect, is a gleeful moment including its French director-writer mocking her own country's cuisine in a grotesque (and high cholesterol) moment where Moore is almost a cackling witch over pots.

The film, never expecting it with no context before of Fargeat's previous film, goes to a level you normally don't find in Cannes Film Festival competition entries. We have had the controversial films with extreme horror and sexual content, like Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (2009), but after the end credits, I couldn't help but hope somewhere Frank Henenlotter, the director of notorious genre films like Frankenhooker (1990), learnt of this film clearly indebted to his cinema among others, and has been able to see this. As an official selection film of prestige, with Demi Moore of all people in its centre, I hope he was cackling with glee when, without spoiling too much, what could have ended perfectly as a horror anthology story conclusion in its macabre form decided to instead take it further. As I get older, I am starting to love even indulgent movies which break the two hour mark into two and a half, and a horror film at two and a half hours is a rare chimera almost unheard of for the genre. Ninety minutes is usually the golden number for the genre, so those that are longer are fascinating for me to see exist, as they have more time to extend and flesh out their content. Where this extensive length comes from, with spoilers if not to ruin everything, is the appearance of "Monstro Elisasue", the creation of old school prosthetics which almost evokes the ending of Tetsuo The Iron Man (1989) in two characters being melded into one, if here of flesh. There is also a blood geyser of such length and amount this clearly had been indebted, or at least paid tribute to, Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) for overdoing the fake blood, a film that notoriously left one New Zealand film studio set so stained it lingered in the flooring years after. It is indulgent as hell, and I admit the soundtrack (least in the cinema screening) did become excessively loud to the point of off-putting, but indulgence is acceptable when you bear witness to the final act that ended as it did. The crowd I was with were not really people used to these films - there was shocked laughter, amazement of what they witnessed and likely discussion afterwards in the bar, and even I, already respecting the film, was knocked back that it ended as giddily twisted as it did. The film only won a Best Screenplay award at Cannes in the official competition, but I do see The Substance as being one of the films that will have a lot to be talked onwards. Coralie Fargeat should have had to wait seven years to get the film off the ground, but what the film does when it finally came was an incredible success. It was for the better that the reviews from that initial Cannes festival were way too subdued from the press, and that warning happened just before my cinema viewing from an usher, as they added perverse cherries on this wonderfully gory cake of ideas.

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1) ‘We can be violent to ourselves. Brutal’: Demi Moore on body image, reinvention and her most shocking role yet, by Charlotte Edwardes for The Guardian, published September 14th 2024.