THE SUBSTANCE
2024 | Dir. Coralie Fargeat | 141 Minutes
"Remember you are one."
Unceremoniously let go by the producer of her television show, aging celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle uses a mysterious drug to create a younger version of herself to begin her career anew. However, the youthful copy callously saps away at Elisabeth at an alarming rate.
Writer/director Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is an instant horror classic. The film is a stylish, surreal, provocative, and intensely furious satire unfolding in an aggressively heightened world taking one woman's feelings of inadequacy, in large part imparted upon her by unrealistic societal beauty standards, to birth a superficially enticing self-destructive monster. When one considers the very last instruction card enclosed within the package of the titular substance printed in bold capitalized letters, a reminder to the user that they and
their counterpart "are one," the most direct reading of the
increasingly antagonistic push-and-pull relationship between Elisabeth and Sue is
Elisabeth expressing the hate she has for herself, an internal conflict that's externalized and transmuted into a visceral interpersonal struggle. Sue stealing time away from Elisabeth is in
reality Elisabeth refusing to accept the current natural state of her aging body and a life away from the spotlight. It's telling that despite her reactive desperation to put an end to Sue when her body
deteriorates to an unrecognizable state, Elisabeth is ultimately unable to let go of
the Sue aspect of herself.
The hilariously sharp dialogue and frantically rapid
pace of The Substance, along with outlandish creature effects of its final act, take the
already excellent dramatic conflict over-the-top. On a technical level, the picture is absolutely phenomenal. The masterful editing by Fargeat, Jérôme Eltabet, Valentin Feron combined with the pulsating electronic score by Raffertie create a tense and breathless audio visual experience with propulsive energy. The practical make-up effects by Pop FX are brilliantly inventive, culminating in the bloody finale with one of the most convincingly rendered fascinatingly disgusting movie monsters in cinema history.
Stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are nothing short of perfect, particularly impressive as the narrative spirals into absolute chaotic and revolting weirdness. Alone without a single word of spoken dialogue in some scenes, Moore gives an exceptionally natural performance portraying a fading star refusing to give up her fame at any cost, remaining consistently engaging even as heavier and heavier prosthetics are applied to her as Elisabeth's body rapidly degenerates. Qualley also gives it her all in the physically demanding role of Sue, totally captivating whether she's mugging for the cameras or literally fighting for her borrowed life. Dennis Quaid is horrifyingly convincing as the blustering slimy television producer all-too-aptly named Harvey.
Incredibly daring and delightfully grotesque, The Substance is a cautionary tale body horror film with unforgettable inventively disgusting imagery. The picture stylishly and mercilessly confronts and subverts the absurdly high value society places on youth and surface-level beauty. Most provocatively, the most terrifying aspect of this feature is arguably its depiction of one woman's self-loathing mutating into full-blown self-destruction.
FRAGMENTS
- The brief introductory sequence elegantly showing without verbal explanation how the titular substance works on an egg is pure genius, as are the bookend sequences of Elisabeth's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
- The moment the "Monstro Elisasue" title card appears is one of my favorite cinematic experiences of 2024
