The Substance, a miracle drug that allows you to realize your perfect self. You are the matrix. Only one injection is needed, a daily stabilizer. Time is shared, every seven days you switch. You have separate bodies but you are one. The balance must be maintained. These are the rules set out at beginning of Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore feature The Substance. Why wouldn’t anyone want to be their ideal self? It’s a question this satirical work of body horror answers in a gloriously gooey and bloody film.
While time has been kind to the figure of fading celebrity Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), male gaze and capitalism have not. Her long-running morning aerobics show is cancelled by her sleaze ball producer Harvey (a hilariously obnoxious Dennis Quaid). She drinks her way through evenings being ignored by younger and younger crowds. There’s not many options for a woman over fifty in the entertainment industry. So when a nurse offers her a phone number that promises a miracle drug to unleash your perfect self, why not take it?
This is truly Demi Moore’s movie. Few actresses at their peak had both their body of work and actual body scrutinized like Demi Moore did. Moore channels those years of male gaze and vapid think pieces into a performance of pure self-loathing. It’s hard to imagine another actress being able to bring this sense of believability to this kind of character, an omnipresent megastar who slid into obscurity.
When the physical transformations begin, Moore brings out a rage and a frustration that always seemed to lurk under her cool, mannered exterior. Her deteriorating exterior only reflects the rotted inside that Moore brings to life. This is a performance cultivated from a lifetime in the grisly, unforgiving Hollywood machine.
However, that performance would be nothing without her other half played by Margaret Qaulley. What The Substance unleashes is Sue. This new version of Elizabeth arrives like something out of a warped Greek myth, erupting fully formed out Elizabeth’s back in a gooey sequence that foreshadows more to come. Sue arrives younger, perkier, and everything that society no longer sees in Elizabeth. She auditions and easily becomes the star of the show that replaces Elizabeth’s.
Qualley proves herself once again open to a role taking her natural vivaciousness in an interesting direction. This time she weaponizes it to become a monster greedy for fame and celebrity. She is a creature feeding on the approval her perfect form gives her. If she has to upset the balance that allows her to exist, damn the consequences.
What makes this film such a marvel to watch is that the two actresses are two distinct personalities but operate as a whole. Their performances are a push and pull even though they barely share screen time. When Sue spends more time awake than she should, Elizabeth rages at the selfishness that she refuses to see inside herself.
As the rules of The Substance say, they’re divided but still one individual. These are two parts of one self-loathing individual, one desperate for fame and the other pure rage and apathy. The Substance may create the perfect version of you but the irony is that it can only perfect your existing imperfections.
As the imbalance ramps up, so does the body horror and violence that writer and director Coralie Fargeat puts on display. The film truly is one of the goopiest and grossest movies in recent years. The last thirty minutes are Grand Guignol theatrics with blood and body parts erupting everywhere.
As there is a push and pull between Elizabeth and Sue, there’s a push and pull between high art and low art in the making of The Substance. There is the high art of Fargeat’s commentary on the commodification of the female body, but there’s also a low art homage to the goopy 80s body horror of films like The Fly, Society, and Re-Animator. Unlike the battle between Elizabeth and Sue, Fargeat maintains the balance that makes for a great movie. Simply put, The Substance is one of the best horror films of this year.
The Substance is currently playing in theaters.
