Women’s issues go hand in hand with body horror, as proven by IN MY SKIN (Dans ma peau; 2002), SWEET WATER (Gigigoegoe seonghyeongsu; 2020), TITANE (2021) and the 2024 film under discussion. Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat and lensed in her native France, THE SUBSTANCE was rejected by its financier Universal Pictures (who had planned to release it through a deal with Working Title Films). MUBI ultimately took on distribution duties, and it became their highest grossing theatrical release.
My verdict? There’s about an hour’s worth of really good stuff, but I say the film is a missed opportunity overall.
The film’s Hollywood milieu was appropriate to a paradoxically un-Hollywood account of body dysmorphia, envy and indulgence, as experienced by the fiftyish actress Elisabeth Sparkle (played by the sixtyish Demi Moore). She’s currently stuck hosting a TV workout show run by a sleazy executive (Dennis Quaid) who’s plotting to replace her with a younger actress.
Following a car accident Elisabeth is examined by a nurse (Robin Greer) who gives her a flash drive promoting The Substance, which promises to use cloning technology to create “a better version of yourself.” Elisabeth’s first impulse is to throw the flash drive in the trash, but overcome by temptation, she signs up as a subject for The Substance. Administering the stuff via a large syringe, she hatches a new person out of her back, a twentyish sexpot (Margaret Qualley) who goes by Sue. The latter wastes no time in taking over the workout show formerly hosted by Elisabeth.
The problem is that Elisabeth and Sue have to switch places every seven days, with one remaining comatose and the other going out and about. If one of the two women stays conscious for too long she causes irreparable damage to the other’s appearance, which proves a major issue, as Sue proves to be selfish and very likely evil. She trashes Elisabeth’s swanky apartment and vastly overstays her allotted time, causing Elisabeth’s flesh to become dried out and wrinkled. Elisabeth retaliates by gorging herself on unhealthy food, and eventually decides to stop taking The Substance altogether. Sue, however, has other ideas…
Much of this film is compelling and suspenseful, with a heavily stylized treatment that showcases its director’s European orientation and demonstrates a real flair for gruesome imagery. Gross-out highlights include a raw turkey evisceration, and a cheeky match cut from Elisabeth’s wrinkly butt to the much firmer posterior of Sue’s toyboy (Hugo Diego Garcia). Kudos go to production designer Stanislas Reydellet’s immaculately ordered space agey rooms and lengthy hallways (one of them sporting carpet designs that consciously replicate those of THE SHINING) whose clinical perfection mocks the protagonist’s bodily neuroses.
As that protagonist Demi Moore delivers what may be her finest-ever performance, and no wonder: Moore, who aired her own anxieties about aging and keeping fit in her 2020 memoir INSIDE OUT, might as well be playing herself. This is certainly her most revealing—in every sense of the word–role, with a great deal of full-frontal nudity (another indication of the film’s European gist). Her much younger co-star Margaret Qualley also displays a great deal of unclothed flesh, although in Qualley’s case much of that flesh was reportedly fake.
Such a wealth of good things makes the film’s conceptual issues all the more frustrating. Fargeat’s view of Hollywood, run by chain-smoking men and dominated by sexually tinged workout programs and a glitzy New Year’s Eve show, is at least three decades out of date, and the film loses its hold entirely in the last 40 minutes. It’s there that Fargeat tries to outdo Carpenter and Cronenberg in physical mutation, rotting bodily appendages, spurting blood and a “Monstro Elisasue” critter that’s straight out of the final scenes of THE THING (1982).
Fargeat deserves credit for closing things out on a go-big-or-go-home note, and for avoiding CGI in favor of old school practical effects a la those of the aforementioned THING and THE FLY (1986). What’s missed is the internal logic of those films, with THE SUBSTANCE abandoning all logic in its concluding scenes, which slither (quite literally) toward a painfully obvious final shot.
Vital Statistics
THE SUBSTANCE
Working Title Films/Blacksmith/The Match Factory/MUBI
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Producer: Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner
Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat
Cinematography: Benjamin Kračun
Editing: Jérôme Eltabet, Coralie Fargeat, Valentin Féron
Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Edward Hamilton Clark, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage, Christian Erickson, Robin Greer, Tom Morton, Hugo Diego Garcia, Daniel Knight, Jonathan Carley, Jiselle Henderkott, Akil Wingate, Billy Bentley, Vincent Colmbe, Lennard Ridsdale, Jonathan Ford Silver, Oscar Salem, Viviane Bossina, Matthew Luret