‘The Substance’: A Visceral, Brilliantly Grotesque Body Horror Spectacle
Julie Maescher ‘27 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Light spoilers ahead.
In 2017, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat instantly established herself as one of the boldest, most exciting new voices in genre filmmaking with her debut Revenge, a modern spin on the rape-revenge thriller that weaponizes decades of cinematic objectification and misogyny to reinvent the language of its genre. Blending maximalist New French Extremity sensibilities with the structure of classic exploitation films, Fargeat’s visceral, blunt-force style immediately announced her as a force to be reckoned with. Her latest film, The Substance, turns her aim towards skewering Hollywood ageism, the absurdity of societal beauty standards, and the perception of women in the public eye, all through the lens of an exhilarating take on gross-out body horror and splatter films. It’s an electrifying confirmation of Fargeat’s unique talents, a cathartic expression of female rage that also goes much further in its devotion to pure grotesque thrills and shocks than arguably any horror film in recent memory.
The Substance follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a once-lauded ‘80s Hollywood star whose acting days are behind her; the film begins with a bravura montage that tracks the evolution of Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, from its glamorous inauguration to its current state of being ignored and littered upon. Elisabeth now hosts a popular aerobics show on TV – that is, until her repulsively sleazy executive boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) suddenly pulls her off the air, telling her “at 50, it just stops” during a lunch meeting. On the way home, Elisabeth witnesses her face being torn down from a billboard, and crashes her car while distracted. She’s miraculously unharmed, but while in the hospital, her nurse informs her that she’d be “a perfect candidate” for a mysterious program called The Substance.
Through an ominous video, Elisabeth finds out more about The Substance, a beauty regimen that promises the user a way to transform into a younger and more beautiful version of themselves by injecting a strange green liquid. For seven days at a time, one can switch between their current self and a more “perfect” one, “stabilizing” the other dormant self in the meantime with a consistent food supply. The only rules? “Respect the balance” and “remember you are one”, Elisabeth is told. Elisabeth takes The Substance, and sure enough, she promptly transforms into a younger self that she simply names Sue (Margaret Qualley). Sue, marching down the streets of Los Angeles with newfound youthful confidence, quickly applies to host the new fitness show that’s replacing Elisabeth’s. Her show becomes an instant success, and as Sue grows more powerful, Elisabeth only shrinks away further into isolation. Elisabeth grows obsessed with her younger self, abusing The Substance and disobeying the balance, a misuse that gradually leads to dire, gruesome circumstances.
To be clear, The Substance is not a film that anyone could mistake for being particularly graceful in its messaging. Fargeat drives her points home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, capturing her images with the same assaultive discomfort as the hypersexualized fitness show within the film. However, the blunt, uncompromising force here is a feature, not a bug. Fargeat approaches this material from a place of raw, palpable anger; she not only attacks the unreasonable beauty standards created by a toxic patriarchal society and the lecherous men that populate it, but also illustrates the self-loathing and body dysmorphia that can be created by these standards. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Elisabeth stares at herself in the mirror before a date with an old acquaintance from her past, continually returning to the mirror just before leaving because she’s unsatisfied with how she looks. Eventually, she quits on the date altogether and stays home, completely defeated by a lack of self-confidence. It’s not subtle, but it rings true, a devastating sequence made all the more resonant by Moore’s heartbreaking performance.
Ultimately, however, The Substance’s greatest pleasures lie in how Fargeat takes this anger and tunes it to a white-hot fever pitch of consistently escalating levels of absurdity and extremity. Fargeat uses her concept as a jumping-off point to reach the furthest extremes possible, twisting it beyond any semblance of good taste and into the realm of comically excessive farce. Once the film shifts into pure gross-out body horror mode, Fargeat takes gleeful pleasure in constantly ratcheting up the degree of lunacy and insanity until there’s seemingly no limit in sight. Just when it seems as if the film surely couldn’t outdo itself in sheer go-for-broke maximalism, it simply keeps escalating until it’s smashed through all possible boundaries, going out in a spectacular Grand Guignol finale that splatters the screen with literal gallons of blood and guts. It’s perhaps the closest any recent film has come to recapturing the delightful shocks of ‘80s horror comedies from filmmakers like Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and Peter Jackson, with gloriously disgusting makeup and prosthetics that recall the works of legendary horror makeup artists like Rick Baker and Screaming Mad George. And yet the film is distinctly Fargeat’s vision through and through, melding this array of influences with her uniquely modern, visceral sensibilities. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart, but for those attuned to its unhinged wavelength, The Substance is a stunning feat in maximalist horror filmmaking, sure to become a midnight-movie staple in the future.