Wondering if Demi Moore’s much-hyped 2-hour and 20-minute body horror feature is worth the watch? Then read on for our full review of The Substance.
Lady Gaga’s 2008 debut album, The Fame, was wildly prophetic. Assuming the guise of the prototypical pop starlet during the late 2000s before she had even an inkling of what fame entailed, the album’s 12-track post-feminist observations on the compulsive, hedonistic obsession with stardom and negotiated identity became a defining chapter of the Hollywood narrative. As she so tactfully describes in the same song which her album takes its name after, ‘All we care about is pornographic girls on film, and body plastic,’ a not-so-subtle allusion to Botox bombshell Von Dutch reality TV vixens from the period.
While I don’t expect Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance to reach similar heights of cultural influence, it doesn’t mean that I am willing to understate its ability to loudly, vibrantly, and grotesquely, stress how the female body and psyche continues to remain the entertainment machine’s most hotly contested battleground.
The Substance review: A vividly gory horror retelling of familiar female paranoias
An unexpected silver screen success on this year’s Cannes circuit, the film sees Demi Moore cast in the role of faded 1980s film star Elisabeth Sparkle, joined by Margaret Qualley as her alter-ego, Sue. Now, let us be very clear here — the premise upon which The Substance is written isn’t unique by any stretch. In fact, if David Koepp’s 1992 blockbuster comedy hit Death Becomes Her had been written exclusively from the perspective of Meryl Streep‘s Madeline Ashton, both films would be almost completely identical in their attempts to dissect female fame and its parasitic demand for youth. Ageing Hollywood luminary desperately clings to youth and relevance, discovers mysterious substance that grants her eternal beauty, enjoys a brief resurgence of her career, suffers the consequences of her avarice and explodes. Fin.
But what cements the experience as a unique one, in my opinion, is Fargeat’s stylish and intuitive use of colour, set design, imagery and symbolism that typifies The Substance in its first ten minutes. Big bold lettering in Impact spells out the movie’s title card, and you are ushered into the heavily saturated world of generic Tinstletown through a piece of instantly recognisable iconography: a star on the Walk of Fame. Elisabeth Sparkle’s star, to be precise, conferred for her apparent contributions to film. Interspersed through decades, as suggested by the changing fashions of young fans that later evolve into indifferent beige tourists types, it’s a clear allegory of Sparkle’s sunset years, with the cracking of the five-pointed tile mirroring the crow’s feet and deep-set wrinkles that similarly mar her time-weathered complexion.
So what is a has-been actress to do when there are no longer roles written for women of a certain age? Well, reality television is an option, or in Sparkle’s case, a highly successful post-film stint as an on-screen aerobics instructor, the progenitor of fitness influencers that now rule a subset of Sunset Boulevard. But of course where fitness is concerned, looking as good as you feel matters, a fact which her sleazebag patriarchal villain TV producer Harvey (played by The Parent Trap’s Dennis Quaid), isn’t shy to reiterate before dismissing the star on her 50th birthday over lunch. “At 50, well it stops.”
This is where the stomach-turning repugnance starts, with mortifyingly close-up shots of Harvey chomping down on coral shrimp curls used to great effect in amplifying the all-too-common female discomfort or anxiety of being belittled and patronised by the weight of patriarchal suggestion.
What would you do if you could live two lives?
Cue the manic spiral into depression that begins with a violent car crash ala Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, and Sparkle is introduced to The Substance by a male nurse with the skin of baby buttocks. “This is simply a better version of yourself,” Here’s how it works: upon being injected into the bloodstream, The Substance begins a process of rapid cell division and creates a younger, more physically perfect counterpart of yourself that is savagely birthed through a tear in your back. During this process, your consciousness is transferred to your factory-fresh vessel and you get to enjoy all the perks of youth with barely any downtime. Every aesthetician’s dream. It’s in this scene that the body horror really kicks into high gear, so you’ve been warned.
Obviously there’s a caveat. The integrity of your new vessel has to be stabilised daily using a single dose of ’Stabiliser Fluid’, otherwise known as spinal fluid obtained through a spinal tap procedure from your original body. And every seven days, you have to switch back into your former self before taking the guise of the newer, fresher you for another seven days. The body that isn’t being used is required to be kept in-stasis, living off a ‘Food Matrix’ solution for a week until the next switch. Rinse, repeat indefinitely. Think of the adage ‘living on borrowed time’, only taken to the extreme.
Entrusted with the fountain of youth, users are thus ominously reminded that “You. Are. One. You can’t escape from yourself.” That revelation becomes increasingly salient when Elisabeth takes on the identity of Sue and begins living two separate lives: one of a rising star who is eventually tapped to replace Elisabeth by Harvey, and another as a middle-aged recluse who thinks she has barely anything left to live for. With splintered realities, a single mind now pilots two halves, both of whom grow to become increasingly resentful of each other’s perceived selfishness of a shared commodity — time.
Wide-eyed and bushy-browed, Sue’s Princess Superstar persona wants more out of life than the seven days she’s allocated. Despite being warned that she must switch back to Elisabeth at the end of every week, she attempts to circumvent the rules by extending her stay by draining a little extra Stabiliser Fluid from Elisabeth after her seventh day to keep the party going. This is despite the fact that the Food Matrix used to keep her alternate body alive had already depleted.
Unbeknownst to Sue/Elisabeth, draining spinal fluid out of her original body without the Food Matrix causes it to age rapidly, a consequence which cannot be reversed. She would only come to discover this when she switches back to her 50-year-old self and realises that one of her fingers now appears decrepit and desiccated. You can see where this is leading.
The remainder of the film depicts her attempts to balance the temptations of unbridled youth with the inevitability of age, as the tension between Elisabeth and Sue mounts progressively in tandem with the latter’s skyrocketing fame. Sue harbours resentment for Elisabeth, who has turned to compulsive eating after becoming increasingly depressed and manic, for wasting seven days. On the other hand, an aged and haggard Elisabeth, appearing akin to Sara Goldfarb from Requiem of a Dream, detests Sue for quite literally sucking her dry.
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley keep a balanced performance for The Substance
Thus marks her descent into madness, which eventually culminates in a very public burning of the proverbial witch (or in this case, monster of male expectations) at the stake. You have to hand it to Demi Moore for her willingness to push her craft into the sheer extremes for The Substance, successfully depicting the anxieties of a woman in her fifties who fears obsolescence behind a mask of dutiful grace before eventually devolving into a state of white-hot paranoia boiling over. A scene where she frantically disembowels a frozen turkey is especially stomach-turning, fuelled by a searing rage for Sue.
Thankfully Margaret Qualley’s performance more than keeps pace, taking on Sue’s ingenue status with the kind of disquieting faux innocence and conviviality that barely contains an insidious malice and unquenchable desire for sybaritic pleasures afforded by pretty privilege and sheer entitlement. She’s sultry, sexy, and plays willingly into the expectations of the men around her, whether it be Harvey’s demands for a prettier smile or a one-night stand’s overt manhandling of her newfound assets, in exchange for adoration.
Like I said, you know which station this train is bound to arrive at, so no prizes for calling it ahead of time. What you will enjoy more however, are the visuals through which the narrative is delivered. Colour plays a particularly major role here, highly saturated to an eye-popping Baz Luhrmann degree.
Elisabeth’s favourite yellow coat goes quickly from deliberate, conservative sophistication off-camera in her composed state, to an acrid mishmash of fabric to hide her mania underneath. On the contrary, Sue’s provocative choice of barely-there high-shine bikinis, cropped tops and skintight catsuits scream for attention and validation, frequently presented in sequences that mirror the debut of a brand-new American sports car.
Then there’s the set design, which pays tribute to several horror classics that most notably include The Shining, with the hallway of Harvey’s television studio mirroring that of the Overlook Hotel, as well as Carrie’s infamous bloodbath sequence on stage in her prom dress. It’s Elisabeth’s bathroom however that proves most memorable throughout The Substance for its stark white clinical quality, deliberately mimicking a laboratory environment upon which societally enforced female paranoias are examined, dissected, and summarily preyed upon.
A visual buffet for the eyes that feeds to the point of excess, I can anticipate The Substance earning cult classic status in a few years, what with its ability to balance audacity with self-aware irony and humour, all wrapped up in punchy pop visuals.
The commentary here isn’t just a means of awareness among a male audience but also doubles as a confrontational reflection for modern women who are whittled down by the disastrous standards they subconsciously uphold and refuse to discard — compulsions of youth, beauty, and conformity. In the era of the Instagram starlet and ‘Finstas’, we are reminded that perception isn’t necessarily always reality, especially if you have to live a life that isn’t yours for the sake of it.
LSA Score: 4 out of 5
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Written by
Benjamin Wong
Senior Editor, Fashion and Dining
Armed with an Advertising major from Lancaster University, Benjamin is a senior editor who has spent his time oscillating between the social media and digital media landscape since 2018. With a keen interest in haute fashion and gastronomy, he has written for publications such as ERROR Digital, WORLD OF BUZZ, and KL Foodie. Beyond the keyboard, you can find him arms-deep in a thrift pile.
