‘The Substance’ Review
Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 feature directorial debut, Revenge, was a vengeful skewering of the rape-revenge film that took direct aim at the genre’s exploitative elements and leaned into them to create one of the most memorable final acts in revenge cinema. A flood of blood and sweat that took itself just seriously enough while leaning into the genre’s over-the-top nature, Fargeat burst onto the horror scene with a distinct voice that seemed ready to make waves. With her newest film, The Substance, Fargeat sets her sights on the suffocating and crippling standards of beauty imposed on women with the same laser focus as she targeted the rape-revenge film. This time, she takes things to even dizzier extremes to make a blunt but nuanced point within the body-horror genre while proudly wearing cinematic influences on her sleeve. For a sophomore feature, few are as ambitious, controlled, searing, and entertaining as The Substance.
Opening with a time-lapse construction of Elisabeth Sparkle’s (Demi Moore) star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the subsequent neglect of its condition, The Substance finds its protagonist at a tipping point in her career. Fired from her long-running aerobics TV show on her fiftieth birthday by the network’s producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), she is soon handed a mysterious USB stick with a phone number and “THE SUBSTANCE” neatly printed on opposite sides. Fired because she is considered too old and unattractive to boost the network’s ratings anymore, she calls the number and seizes the opportunity to reclaim her glory days. Through a procedure done individually and at home, Elisabeth creates a more beautiful and younger version of herself - not a clone, but a splitting of the cells that create a new person from material within the host’s body - and soon Sue (Margaret Qualley) is born and begins boosting Harvey’s ratings with a new aerobics TV show.
There’s no subtlety in Fargeat’s screenplay, but the film doesn’t suffer because of it. Instead, it allows The Substance to lean into its self-deprecating behavior and find a darkly comedic undertone to its overtly pointed commentary. It’s a familiar case with Fargeat’s Revenge, but a far more ambitious sci-fi premise underpins its tonal balance that keeps the film from spiraling out of control. The rules of using The Substance are outlined right from the beginning, and it’s obvious Elisabeth will betray those tenets at some point, but it’s why and ultimately how it manifests that makes The Substance enthralling for viewers. However, the mechanics are intriguing enough as Elisabeth injects herself with a glowing green liquid to kickstart the process and is subjected to a seven-day limit between bodies as she slowly feeds the dormant one. At the same time, the new one stabilizes itself with nourishment from the host. A bit of Re-Animator and a lot of David Cronenberg fuels the film’s hybrid mix of science fiction and horror.
Beginning to explore where Fargeat drew influences from is also a lot of fun, as she takes the disparate elements of many body horror films and melds them into her own nightmarish concoction. It’s how she reins all of the film’s obvious inspirations into a single conceit that propels the film forward, which leaves the film feeling fresh and innovative, especially given how wildly it goes into horror territory that doesn’t often grace the big screen nowadays. It’s a big swing that is the payoff for establishing its rules from the beginning but not being afraid to push against them in a way that is logical for its protagonist and thought-provoking for the audience. The result is truly one of the most inspired, insane endings in a film opening in almost 2,000 theaters across North America. That someone might stumble into a cinema to watch the new Demi Moore film and find themselves locked into what The Substance ultimately becomes is a humorous thought.
It’s also heartening to watch Moore take the risk alongside Qualley and Fargeat. While the latter are no strangers to the genre, Moore has never had a role this intense. It’s the kind of performance where you have to be willing to go for broke for its message to land as severely as it does. Moore seizes the opportunity to craft something genuinely emotional out of a movie where the screenplay already does a lot of the heavy lifting. It’s a commitment to the horrors of its concept but also tapping into what resonates so strongly about the harmful beauty standards at its core. Qualley continues to be a tremendous force in cinema because she commits to the vision of her directors and is game for anything they throw her way. Rest assured, Fargeat throws plenty towards her two stars. Quaid also comes in swinging, quite literally, and embodies an extremely despicable character that arguably has the most abrasive introduction for a character that immediately sets the tone for how vile and slightly comedic The Substance’s tone will be.
It’s also fitting that The Substance is lensed by Benjamin Kracun, whose work on Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman also hammered home the film’s message while still being gorgeous and slick. Moving between the lives of Elisabeth and Sue, the film employs so many different color palettes and emphasizes the darkness hanging over Elisabeth. At the same time, Sue breaks in her new body against the backdrop of eye-popping colors and sleek interiors so intensely felt throughout the film that they take on an otherworldly feeling thanks to their incorporation into the narrative. The production and set design is immaculate, and even spaces like the hallway to the television studio feel like a liminal space between reality and fantasy. Combined with editing from Revenge’s editors Fargeat and Jerome Eltabet and the addition of Valentin Féron, there’s a frantic pace that helps keep The Substance from spinning its tires too long. Even at a 141-minute runtime, The Substance feels brisk thanks to its superb pacing and understanding that scenes don’t just need to serve either chaos or tension but can also create an unsettling comedic element when edited appropriately.
There’s a lot that can be said about how blunt The Substance is in its messaging of beauty standards and how it can become self-destructive to those subjected to it. And Fargeat makes no doubt about it: it is women who are subjected to it daily that torments and cuts down self-esteem until there’s nothing left but a steadfast desire to be someone you’re not. There’s a crippling factor to the beauty standards that blinds Elisabeth from seeing the legacy she’s achieved thanks to the ease with which she’s discarded on her fiftieth birthday. The fact that the movie opens with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is so carefully constructed, is a testament that she had the value she craved. Sue’s worth is determined only by her looks as well and is dependent on Elisabeth’s body to survive, which puts an even finer point on the way women are forced to cut each other down to feel self-worth. Confronted by a parade of similar-looking old White men, all snarling and grinning at the prospect of a new revenue stream from a new female body to exploit, The Substance makes its women feel powerless even when it seems they could rule the world.
Subtlety isn’t always the smart route for a film, and Fargeat knows this better than anyone. Her style is maximalist, and it’s fitting that she doesn’t just let stylistic tendencies go big but also her messages. There’s a nuance to The Substance that can easily go overlooked, but taken at face value, it's direct in its messaging towards men and women about the forces pushing against women every day of their lives. Fargeat gives a platform for Moore to turn in one of the best performances of her career, and it’s the kind of performance that horror fans will celebrate for years to come. The same can be said about Fargeat’s direction, as The Substance isn’t just an over-the-top bloodbath with a heavy-handed message but also one of the most finely crafted body horror films of the 21st century.
