The Substance: A Bloody Mess

Do you have the spine for it?

The Substance, starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid, is French filmmaker Coraline Fargeat’s latest body-horror treatise on aging and beauty standards for women. Premiering at this past May’s Cannes Film Festival, Fargeat’s film was met with rave reviews and is primed to be a career comeback for Demi Moore. Fargeat is coming off her revisionist rape-revenge drama The Revenge from 2017 and is back to revisit many of the feminist themes she holds dear. Drawing from body-horror filmmakers like Cronenberg, Lynch, and Carpenter, she uses special effects to say something important beyond all the blood and guts. But, does she really? Is The Substance a ground-breaking body-horror film in the vein of her idols or another in a line of forgettable horror movies? 

Fargeat charts the story of an aging Hollywood actress turned television aerobics workout host named Elisabeth Sparkle played by Demi Moore. In a world that’s supposedly modern, yet evokes the Los Angeles of the 1980s where sex and consumerism are top dollar, Elisabeth Sparkle is fired from her show for *gasp* turning fifty years old. After suffering a car accident without any noticeable injuries, she’s recommended an anonymous black-market drug by a suspiciously young doctor. In a moment of desperation, she calls the number and is introduced to a body enhancement program known as The Substance to restart her career as a young starlet now that her old job is vacant. Taking this injection, Elisabeth’s back splits open down her spine, and a younger body emerges that is physically perfect, vibrant, and sexy. This version is played by Margaret Qualley who dubs herself Sue. The catch is the younger version can only operate for a week and must switch with the older version for another week, alternating like this guarantees that both bodies stay operational as both bodies are in essence one. Sue goes on to be a young star, taking Sparkle’s old job, and is now doted on by Sparkle’s former sleaze-ball boss played by a rambunctiously flamboyant Dennis Quaid. At the same time, Sparkle wastes away alone in her apartment too afraid to face the world. The film operates like a twisted Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde set in cosmetic surgery and L.A. artificiality. However, as Sue gains greater independence, she begins misusing the substance elongating the period of youth to drastic effects, culminating in a bloody finale. 

Having not seen Fargeat’s previous film, I witnessed her style for the first time and it’s definitely not subtle. For body-horror fans, the effects are truly gut-wrenching and not for the faint of the heart. With a very explicit style full of wide-angle lenses, extreme close-ups, cartoony sound effects, and absurdist set designs, Fargeat creates her own striking world. Along with the horror and technical craft, Fargeat sprinkles the film with sly, satirical humor I appreciated in turns. Especially anything to do with Dennis Quaid’s admittedly obtuse characterization of the stereotypical Hollywood executive who has a cabal of white-male shareholders following him at every turn. It’s a bold choice for Quaid who’s just coming off a Reagan biopic and has been squandering away in faith-based films since his turn to conservative politics. Frankly, I wish more conservative actors would take a few artistic risks or could have the opportunity (looking at you James Woods). Quaid’s not the only one who’s doing some audacious work. Demi Moore takes some big swings here, potentially drawing on her own experiences as a former sex icon who’s aging in an industry that prioritizes youth above everything. She and Qualley take on these overtly sexual roles, sacrificing their bodies and self-image to indulge a filmmaker in a wild vision that unfortunately rarely lands. 

While I admire the guts and style this film has, it’s been bewildering to see the critical and audience acclaim this film has achieved from Cannes till now. I’m sure to be in the minority here, but Fargeat’s latest feminist body-horror film is on the nose, poorly structured, tonally confused, and overly long. There are many key issues with The Substance, but the main one stems from the inability to either function as a biting social satire or an engrossing psychological horror film. It can’t do both. There’s a priority on technical gimmicks over telling a tight, poignant story. Concerning the satirical elements, it’s surprising to see Fargeat fail to see the relevance of issues such as body image in today’s time, fashioning her Los Angeles to a pseudo-80s environment instead of the social media-obsessed landscape we’re in today. What’s worse is that many of the ideas in the film are obvious: aging, self-worth, self-image, vanity, patriarchy, celebrity, and beauty standards. That’s not to say these ideas are not worthy of exploration. Let’s take Fargeat’s obsession with the human body. She presents a clear juxtaposition between Moore and Qualley, where the former hates herself and her appearance and sits around sullen while Qualley is up and about looking sexy as ever. The stuff that Fargeat gets away with in terms of depicting the human body would send any male director to the social media gulag. Anyway, I only bring this up since she deliberately shoots Qualley with a “male gaze” down to the way she eats food to turn the camera around to the audience in an attempt to make a half-hearted comment on the gaze of men and the relationship women have with it. It’s a sort of bourgeois feminism that’s on repeat throughout the film. There’s nothing wrong with exploring these ideas per say, a film like Barbie went a cleaner direction with similar ideas, but Fargeat constantly repeats her ideas instead of gaining insight into the root of these themes on a human level. Nothing. Everything is surface-level, refusing to probe into the existential fears of aging and irrelevance the main character presumably undergoes, relying on the audience to fill in the gaps. 

It all starts with Fargeat’s refusal to develop Demi Moore’s character beyond the fact that she was once a sexy, it-girl and is now old. From the start, there’s very little human or emotional connection to the main character who we’re supposed to feel sorry for. From the get-go, the stakes are low unless perhaps you’re also a fifty-plus-year-old actress undergoing self-image issues, you’re supposed to just get with it. But, a director needs the entire audience to believe in this woman’s troubles and Fargeat fails to provide any significant human interest. Without an emotional core, none of the film’s ideas can land. What made the body-horror films that inspired The Substance like the works of Cronenberg and Carpenter work is that they developed interesting characters to frame the action and drive the story’s themes. Take John Carpenter’s The Thing for example. Generally, the film deals with paranoia, isolation, and the essence of human nature. If not for Carpenter’s deft characterizations of his cast and Kurt Russell in particular, the film would fall flat and be a mirage of ideas rather than a cohesive story. This is what The Substance eventually succumbs to with the special effects and ‘ideas’ taking over for character.

While I’ve come down pretty hard on The Substance, it’s seemingly found an audience. Critics adore it. Fans are hailing it as one of the best horror films in years. Perhaps it’s not for me. Fans of gore will surely have a lot to enjoy with tremendous special effects, blood, and guts. For fans of exploitation, they may be able to ignore the many flaws and have a fun time at the movies, reveling in sex and violence. I for one can’t ignore it. Roger Ebert once said, “no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short”. For me, The Substance is a bad movie that’s way too long. I may have been able to get past many of the shortcomings if it were at least forty minutes shorter but more importantly tighter. Cutting time could have made Fargeat’s vision far more distinct, possibly forcing her to lean into psychological horror or social satire. However, the longer you spend with this film, the less potent Fargeat’s messages eventually become especially without a developed character to back them up. Coraline Fargeat is clearly a unique talent with strong technical skills albeit misused. Her vision most certainly is not to my taste nor effective in its execution, yet it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker commit to something completely her own and bonkers in its own right. She very well could have made a run-of-the-mill celebrity biopic to draw her points home but opted instead for something original. Still, originality and all, The Substance is a one-trick pony that’s truly exhausting to sit through. [1.75/4]