The Substance (2024)
A spoiler-free review.
Serving Kubrick, Cronenberg, and Cunt
Elizabeth Sparkle’s (Demi Moore) star is fading. Sporting a spandex leotard and neon legwarmers, the aging host of a jazzercise show broadcasted on network television is the product of a bygone era in more ways than one.
As Harvey (Dennis Quaid), a repulsive network executive gorging himself on shellfish, explains, “People always ask for something new. It’s inevitable. At fifty, well, it stops.” Deemed sexually obsolete, she is professionally disposable, and so Elizabeth is unceremoniously fired.
Her spacious L.A. penthouse begins to feel like a guilded cage; ostensibly purchased at her zenith, it is a reminder of her past success. Presently, and for the foreseeable future, Elizabeth will languish in exile. As a woman “past her prime,” she has no choice but to accept her worthlessness. Her dim future seems a fait accompli until she finds The Substance. With seemingly nothing left to lose, she partakes. The results are unfathomable in more ways than one.
Writer/Director Coralie Fargeat's sophomore feature unquestionably cements her place among the industry’s adept filmmakers. The Substance masterfully modulates tone, oscillating between acerbic satire and unrestrained body horror.
Demi Moore delivers a dynamic performance, shepherding viewers from the vulnerable depths of despair to the peak of anguish and terror while peppering in madcap moments that provide much-needed comic relief.
It’s ironic that “You are one” is a refrain in The Substance, a multifaceted cinematic powerhouse that manages to evoke sympathy, disgust, laughter, and fear. It is a deeply disturbing delight that is many things at once. It’s like the unholy mass of flesh birthed from a misplaced orifice towards the end of a film, an awe-inspiring aberration that resembles a breast, eyeball, and testicle all at once.
Thankfully, the film’s frightful body horror comes in fits and starts. Betwixt and between are bouts of dark comedy, biting satire, building tension, and deeply human drama.
Fargeat draws upon numerous sources of inspiration to create The Substance. A rudimentary description of the premise might be “a pharmaceutical Portrait of Dorian Gray.” In that regard, Fargeat’s film isn’t as new as it is fresh. For the premise, it’s Oscar Wilde meets Ozempic.
For its world, she employs Stanley Kubrick’s penchant for bold colors and meticulous composition, imparting a sense of order underlain by uncanniness.
She borrows heavily from David Cronenberg's sensibilities to render The Substance’s physical impacts, serving up a harrowing amuse-bouche of body horror that, by the film's final act, putrifies into something utterly singular. Nothing will prepare you.
I have a high tolerance for horror, and, at its most intense moments, The Substance pushed the envelope in ways I thought I had become inured to. It’s a glorious thing to experience in an auditorium full of strangers. I gasped and squirmed with the rest of them. In a fit of repulsion, I even spoke during the movie.
“Girl, don’t fucking do that,” I said as she proceeded to do it anyways.
Despite the numerous gruesome sights, I could not look away. The revolting props and prothetics commanded my attention and demand admiration. The film is, at times, downright appalling. It’s artistry is rooted in a ghastly exploration of beauty, bolstered by supreme technical competence.
Fargeat’s film also indulges a leering, porny gaze befitting a Sam Levison production to comment on the way we are conditioned to look at women.
However, where Levinson uncritically replicates the male gaze in projects like The Idol, Fargeat distills the essence of the male gaze and wields it like a weapon. Close-up sequences of tits and ass, propelled onscreen by the score’s pulsating bass, are pumped directly into viewers’ veins.
Despite knowing better, I found myself slurping down the sweet poison of these glossy sequences of pure objectification. Sue, with her perky breasts and hourglass waist, is living her best life. We stan a girlypop effortlessly serving cunt, right?
In the story, these problematic moments of female objectification are the pinnacle of Elizabeth’s euphoria. However, with its deliciously ironic presentation of the female form, Fargeat’s titillation of unsuspecting viewers with sex and skin presents a dysmorphic ideal whose dysphoric underpinnings become increasingly evident as the film progresses.
It is a dysphoric ideal I know all too well. Like Elizabeth, I’ve pursued an “ideal” version of my body that, in the words of The Substance, did not “respect the balance.” The results were disastrous, but the extent of my self-abuse wasn’t evident to me at the time. I didn’t see the harm I was doing. Looking at my body, I only saw a reflection of the results. I was wasting away with hopes of becoming beautiful.
“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger? More beautiful? More perfect?”
-The Substance
Of course you have. It’s all but inescapable, and The Substance reflects that fact.
You and I Are in a Cult
The cult of “Health & Wellness” is omnipresent in American culture. Whether you like it or not, you have been inducted into its ranks, conditioned in the art of self-loathing, and primed to consume products and services that you hope will quell your gnawing feelings of inadequacy. Those feelings aren’t there by accident; they’ve been inculcated throughout your life.
You are sold notions of body positivity by the same people who sew the seeds of dysmorphia. Self-care products are shilled by companies that capitalize on your perpetual dissatisfaction. Your teeth aren’t white enough. Your stomach isn’t flat enough. Your muscles need to be more well-defined. Your skin is blotchy. Your lips aren’t luscious. Your eyelashes aren’t long.
You are not good enough, and you never will be… but maybe if you buy this product or follow this fad diet, maybe then you’ll get the results you’re looking for. Maybe things will be different, and you’ll finally feel good enough.
I regret to inform you, my dear reader, that pursuing your dysmorphic ideal is folly. The results are never enough, and, if they are, they almost always come at too high a cost.
In a world where Instagram ads shill “flat tummy tea” that will make you shit your brains out and barbaric cosmetic procedures are considered par for the course, the allure of something like The Substance is distressingly realistic.
In our sick culture, being healthy and being thin are essentially synonymous. If you tell your doctor about any health condition, their first recommendation is likely to be that you “lose some weight.”
Your stomach needs to appear flat, never mind the numerous vital organs in your abdomen. It may contradict the human body’s design, but washboard abs are worth any sacrifice, right?
Similarly, youth is uncritically equated with beauty. As The Substance demonstrates, aging women are forced into obsolescence based on their sex appeal. However, with the advent of modern plastic surgery, we can now age while appearing ageless.
Get rid of your wrinkles with a facelift! It’s just a few small incisions around the hairline, behind the ears, and under your chin. After separating your skin from underlying tissues and muscles, a doctor will suck out excess fat, tighten the muscles and then yank and stitch your flesh back into place.
Is your face too round? For a small fortune, a surgeon can make two small incisions in the back of your mouth, sever the buccinator muscles, squeeze your buccal fat pads from your cheeks, and pull them out of the slits in your mouth. After a period of swelling, bruising, and being unable to eat solid food, you will have sallow cheeks that scream heroine-chique.
Name an insecurity, and I guarantee you there’s a product or service prepared to promise you a solution. The Substance, keenly aware of that fact, is poised to prey on omnipresent inadequacy.
Do I fault Elizabeth for her decision to use The Substance? Not at all. Thoroughly convinced of her worthlessness, she feels as if she has nothing to lose.
Nor do I judge anyone that opts for cosmetic surgery. You have every right to do anything you like to feel better in your body. The proposed alterations, brutal as they may be, are a symptom of an intractable problem with how we are conditioned to feel perpetually unworthy.
I can only point out the problem. I do not pretend to have the solution.
“Balance” and a “Better You”
Is it possible to achieve your “dysmorphic ideal” without ultimately compromising your health? Sure, in theory. Self-improvement is not inherently Faustian. The key is balance, a fact that The Substance stresses. However, as The Substance unfolds, the feasibility of balance in the face of the pure euphoria of achieving a dysmorphic ideal is exceptionally difficult to maintain. Furthermore, the conception of “a better you,” influenced by our society’s insidious dysmorphia, is not necessarily a happier or healthier you.
Such is the brilliance of The Substance, a grotesque fable about the pursuit of the unattainable that puts the body through the wringer with its carefully concocted formula of belly laughs, heart-wrenching pathos, and stomach-churning gore.
Viewers who can endure The Subtance will be rewarded, but because of its severe body horror, it is emphatically an acquired taste. As I hinted above, the film’s third act pushes beyond the boundaries of satire, teetering into blood-soaked absurdism. It’s a welcome change of pace, potentially offering a twisted comic catharsis.
I say potentially because, in the film's final minutes, I saw someone get up to leave the theater.
“We’re so close,” I thought, watching him walk out, “We’ve endured so much to get here. Why not see it through to the end?”
Then I returned my attention to the film, where incalculable gallons of blood splattered across the screen. At that moment, I understood he had reached his limit. I don’t begrudge him that. The Substance is a helluva trip, delightful but undeniably unpleasant.
Until next week, ask your doctor if The Substance is right for you, my fellow film freak.
Fabulous review. I feel noticeably uncomfortable just reading it so clearly the horror is beyond my ability to sit as long as the gentleman who left early. I appreciate how you can say so much sparking interest and inquiry without spoilers.
Wonderful review!