The Substance is, by any stretch, a batshit sophomore step for Coralie Fargeat and without a doubt the most nuts thing on Demi Moore’s CV. Where Fargeat’s 2017 debut Revenge offered a vibrant visceral update of the rape-revenge sub-genre, The Substance is a stylish, sexy, and all together horrifying new chapter in body horror.
Moore stars as Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood star sustaining her fame and vanity through the world of televised aerobics. After learning she’s being let go from the network, Sparkle signs up for a mysterious black-market drug known as ‘The Substance’ which allows her to create the ‘best version’ of herself; the younger, hotter, more energetic Sue (Margaret Qualley). But they must adhere to the strict rule of a week of life each, whilst one lives, the other slumbers. The Substance has its rules, and breaking those rules leads to horrifying consequences.
It’s a lavish slice of camp with a blender-full of ideas about femme-fame, age, sex, cosmetics, and Hollywood. Toying with the grotesquery of Brian Yuzna’s Society and the ingenuity of 70’s David Cronenberg, The Substance drags The Picture of Dorian Gray out of the 19th century and dumps it square in the day-glo madness of an LA –style (though shot entirely in Paris) cityscape.
Fargeat’s Hollywood is a sycophantic machine designed to adore right up to the point of irrelevance, its hallways summon the spectre of the Kubrickian Overlook, and producers who lurk there are garish sociopaths. It chews up and spits out stars with all the candour of Dennis Quaid gobbling langoustines and discarding the corpses. Forget the elastic snap of skin and muscle, Quaid’s greasy mouth, shot close-up, dripping seafood, is one of the film’s real icks. But fame is only half the formula with The Substance, Fargeat is also fascinated by cosmetics.
Whether it’s the pasty feeding solution fed on a drip to the slumbering body, the rejuvenation fluid extracted via spinal injection, the horrifying expulsion of Sue, or even just the luminous green vial that kicks the whole thing off, it all reeks of chemical peels, rhinoplasties, collagen injections, silicone implants, and the many lotions and potions which can be bought and used at home to pickle oneself. Things that, if used incorrectly, can go horribly wrong.
Fargeat captures the zeitgeist so well by not bothering with eternal life but eternal beauty and, at extension, eternal relevance. So in many ways, The Substance feels like a spiritual successor to Robert Zemickis’ Death Becomes Her. There’s familial resemblance to The Outside Ana Lily Amirpour’s segment of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, but also Philip Brophy’s trashy 90’s schlock fest Body Melt in the way it creates farce from beauty standards.
In The Fly, Street Trash, and The Thing body horror comes from innocuous decisions and accidents: an ill-fated trip in a teleporter, drinking dodgy beer, and taking in a stray dog. Fargeat, however, toys with the wisdom of repugnance. She makes the process of The Substance so monstrous that it seems an inconceivable option. Yet, it’s an apt parody of the lengths the rich and beautiful will go to remain the latter indefinitely. Consider the tales of Elizabeth Bathory, who supposedly bathed in the blood of maidens to retain her youth, or, more recently, multimillionaire Bryan Johnson who infused himself with plasma from his teenage son to slow his ageing process. There is no shortage of mad and shocking inspirations.
Fargeat’s shocks are potent, but The Substance is more indebted to farce and schlock than anything else. With its cartoon colouring, lurid fitness footage, grandiose old/new Hollywood interiors, bizarre birthing, gore galore, glistening flesh, bouncing bums, and black comedy, The Substance is an absolute feast for the senses. It’s a pitch-perfect marriage of script and style, with a delectable balance of tones most deserving of its Best Screenplay award at Cannes 2024. Most of all though, it’s a lot of fun. Fargeat never shies away from stitching humour tightly between the fleshy folds of the disgusting and the heartfelt, but it is Moore’s self-parodying performance that carries the films depth and provides a beating heart to everything else going on, no matter how bizarre.
The Substance is a fresh contemporary classic; a fabulous freakish fable of fame, body horror as pop art, a shiny sticky plastic thing that induces revulsion and awe. Coralie Fargeat is at the top of her game and has delivered a second feature crammed with ambition, style, and, dare I say, substance.
4/5
Scott Clark
Dir. Coralie Fargeat
Stars. Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Oscar Lesage,
