The Substance Magazine Review: A Grotesque Attack on Our Obsession with Youth

While studios love to promote their latest horror films by claiming they are so scary they will traumatize viewers, it is rare for a feature film to live up to that kind of hype. But Substance The new body horror from writer-director Coralie Fargeat is far more unsettling (a feature, not a bug) than any of its early trailers.

Movies about the suffering of having to conform to female beauty standards are nothing new, but Substance weaves them into a penetrating feminist parable that feels directly embedded in the moment that gave us access to Ozempic on demand and Brat. And what the film lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in an inspiring — if nauseating — story that aims to get under your skin, no matter how safe you feel in your own body.

After years of hosting a popular aerobics TV show, fitness icon Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has just about everything she ever wanted. She’s rich, famous, and her face is everywhere in Los Angeles, where her name has become synonymous with the overt sexiness of her long-running sitcom. But on the day Elisabeth turns 50, her piggish boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) informs her that her time at the studio is coming to an end. He insists that Elisabeth’s firing is simply a consequence of viewers’ changing tastes in programming, but she knows it’s just her age.

Elisabeth understands how, especially in show business, women can become personae non gratae when men in power decide they are no longer physically desirable. And the reality of being pushed away from the world so disturbs Elisabeth that she barely thinks twice when she is given the opportunity to try a mysterious drug that promises to transform her into a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. Substance works, and Elisabeth gives birth to Sue (Margaret Qualley), a beautiful twenty-something whose looks send men into cartoonish fits. But while Elisabeth is initially happy with her double life, she soon finds herself at odds with Sue as “they” struggle to follow the strict rules about how Substance is to be used.

It doesn’t take many licks to get through it SubstanceThe film’s shiny, candy-coated exterior conceals a powerful message about the way society forces women to strive for perfection and conform to unrealistic ideas of femininity. Substance repeatedly explains that Elizabeth and Sue are the same person and must change their physical forms for a week to maintain stability. The premise itself is an effective metaphor for the way our youth-obsessed culture forces people into drastic changes through drugs, plastic surgery, and extreme lifestyle changes that come with a degree of risk.

This is horrible to watch Substancevisceral shots of skin being torn and body fluids being released through twisted tubes. But when Sue steps out into the world, Fargeat presents it as a wonderland of sex and power, intoxicating enough to make the pain of her transformation worth it. Although Substance includes a handful of other characters, Moore and Qualley command the film with their dueling performances. Together they paint a complex picture of women struggling with each other for control over a life for which they are both responsible but have drastically different experiences.

Moore brings a desperate weariness to Elisabeth, whose status as a fitness icon in spandex could be read as a nod to the actress’s early ’80s fame. And there’s something sociopathic about the way Qualley plays Sue as a woman who simply pretends to be a naïve “girl next door” in order to confuse uncouth men. As the drug opens more and more doors for Sue that were once closed to Elisabeth, Substance begins to reflect many of the rhythms that have shaped All about Ewa while conveying a dark eroticism reminiscent of the work of Paul Verhoeven Dancer girlsBut as Elisabeth and Sue’s struggle for control of their lives intensifies, the film enters territory reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s work To crash AND Crimes of the futurewhich Fargeat prepares herself, using buckets of artistically scattered entrails.

Although there is a clear comedy note in the film, Substance is not a film for the faint of heart. Many of its most stunning scenes are soaked in blood spurting from unnatural orifices and bodies warping in nightmarish ways. They are spectacularly bland. Fargeat wants you to feel the fantasy and witness the agony of trying to sustain it. Substance It might make you feel sick and a little dizzy, but that’s how you’ll know it’s working.

Substance also stars Hugo Diego Garcia, Philip Schurer, Joseph Balderrama, Tom Morton and Robin Greer. The film hits theaters on September 20.