The Substance (2024)

“CON-TROL YOUR-SELF!!!!!”

Coralie Fargeat’s follow up to her visceral debut feature Revenge is a biting absurdist satire that will keep you hooked for the entire runtime. Fargeat keeps her body horror story light on exposition & dialog, and instead uses rhythms & colours to convey the characters’ thoughts & feelings. Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a Hollywood actress-turned-fitness guru who’s forced to retire when the studio decides she’s past her prime. She takes a mysterious drug that promises to create a “better version” of herself, and soon she is caught in a power struggle between her ageing self and Sue, her “other, more perfect self” (played by Margaret Qualley).

This movie is a visual feast, thanks in part to Benjamin Kracun’s cinematography and the practical effects by Pop FX. After wrapping principal photography with the cast, Fargeat and her crew spent a month shooting all the insert shots that make up so much of the film’s rhythm. Many, many shots reference Kubrick, Cronenberg, Lynch (and more!) which adds to the hyper-reality of this universe where everything is exaggerated, especially the male gaze.

Elisabeth looks at her body as a kind of prison, a vector for her self hatred. She sees food as revolting, her kitchen is tiny compared to her vast home. She punishes herself by restricting food, and then she punishes Sue by consuming food. In contrast, Sue sees her body as a source of power, until she’s confronted with its limitations, and (like Elisabeth) she also takes drastic steps to cling to that illusion. In her final moments, the horror comes not from the gore (which is spectacular), but her insistence that “It’s still me!” — a lesson she’s learned too late.

While the titular Substance may seem ridiculous, the metaphor is spot on. How much energy and money do we pump into products that promise to fix our superfluous flaws? “She’s stealing more and more time from me” cries Elisabeth, but how much time have we all wasted plucking & waxing, examining our pores, pinching our skin because it’s too fat, too flabby. How much physical pain do we inflict upon ourselves, just to look ‘good’? The Substance insists “REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE”, but it literally splits the body in two. This is the lie of the ‘self-care’ beauty industry — buy this product to feel better, but don’t feel too good, because we have more products to sell.