The Substance (2024) review

Dir. Coraline Fargeat

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

Growing up and getting older isn’t always so bad. For example, one day you’re a teenager making an account on an overseas social networking site for film lovers and subsequently arguing with cinephiles more than double your age. Over the years, you see it transform into a laudable streaming service, and eventually, a quietly powerful mecca for arthouse film distribution. Then, as you’re rapidly approaching 30, you see that website’s same logo before one of the best movie experiences you’ve had in theaters all year.

Tip of the cap, Mubi. Glory to your rising empire, and thank you for all you’ve done.

The Substance is an audacious work of body horror and satire, one that retains its silliness without compromising its potency in either department. A difficult feat, but seemingly effortless for a talented auteur like Coralie Fargeat, whose sophomore effort feels like a Cronenbergian take on the Showgirls formula with all the eroticism replaced with nasty images that seer themselves into your retinas.

The Substance starts with an overhead shot of the construction, celebration, and eventual degradation of a star, ostensibly on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It belongs to Elisabeth Sparkle, expertly played with both dry comedic and dramatic heft by Demi Moore. She hosts a primetime fitness program for a network run by a dastardly narcissist, fittingly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid), whom she overhears wants her replaced with a younger, sexier model. An opportunity called “The Substance” presents itself to Elisabeth. It’s an injection that allows you to create a younger, spryer version of yourself who will be perceived as more beautiful in the eyes of society.

The Substance — its brochure delivered in flash-drive form and then subsequently obtained through a locker located in a graffiti-laden alleyway — works for Elisabeth precisely as advertised. It’s in this scene where we realize Fargeat isn’t playing around. She shows the agony it puts Elisabeth through from the moment she injects herself: her vision distorts, her eyeballs double in their sockets, her younger version born by splitting open her back, leaving the shell of the unconscious Elisabeth lying on the cold, tiled bathroom floor. This “newborn,” roughly early 20s in age, goes by Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, on a tear this year following Drive-Away Dolls and Kinds of Kindness.

As with any miracle movie-drug, rules must be followed and prices will be paid. The biggest one being that Sue and Elisabeth cannot coexist simultaneously. They get exactly seven days to act as themselves before they must switch, leaving the other unconscious. Sue immediately finds success, winning over Harvey as Elisabeth’s replacement; meanwhile, the elder stateswoman of fitness television finds great difficulty transitioning into her glory years, forced to watch Sue live a modern version of her previous life. Help for the two is delivered by an unseen “Deep Throat”-esque voice over-the-phone, who takes calls to “The Substance” HQ, and informs both of them time-and-time again that they operate as one: “There is no ‘she’ or ‘her.’ There is only you.”

Fargeat is so confident in this material, deservedly so, that you could feel her swagger permeate many sequences. Her style favors the extreme closeup. Consider Quaid, delivering one of his most dedicated and passionate performances in ages. We first meet him as he storms into the men’s room, the camera position from afar, atop a urinal. Quaid approaches the urinal to drain the main vein, and we see his mug in intense clarity. Later, we get the closeup of his lips as he sloppily devours crawfish in a lunch meeting with Elisabeth. This scene is among the first to communicate two things that will remain constants throughout the film: Fargeat is not afraid to show the disgusting, up close and personal, and she has full confidence in the disgustingness not impeding the film’s message.

Fargeat shows us the squishy, squashy, grimy, gooey, bloody, brutal, ugly, unruly, and reprehensible body horror all in unambiguous detail. It’s as brave as it is nauseating; a laudably brave outlier in a sea of movies too afraid to show a knife-wound. This comes as Sue and Elisabeth grow increasingly restless with the rules of The Substance. It’s Sue who breaks the rules by refusing to go unconscious after her seven days are up, “stealing” more of her creator’s spinal fluid in order to keep living out her own personal dreams of fame. This creates irreversible consequences for Elisabeth, the likes of which are a gonzo delight as they continue to progress. Just when you think Fargeat, the quartet of makeup designers, and costume designer Emmanuelle Youchnovski — all of whom Oscar-worthy — have hit their apex with reveals, they miraculously find another gear. More miraculously, each of their big-swings prove to be grand-slams.

Demi Moore is a wonderfully conscious casting choice for Elisabeth, for Moore was once the youthful Hollywood it-girl only to be cast aside in recent years, with fewer and fewer statement roles. She delivers her most significant performance in years, fittingly in a film that deals with ageism and the desire to remain youthful having life-altering consequences. Both her and Margaret Qualley, in another dynamic outing this year alone, deliver physically exhausting performances. Where Moore’s character gets saddled with a devastatingly brutal physical transformation, Qualley’s hypersexualized aerobics workouts are no easy feat either.

If The Substance bears a shortcoming, it’s its occasional flat-footedness when developing the rules. At first it appears that Elisabeth and Sue are connected, but when it’s revealed that they both harbor their own agency, I wondered what was the purpose of The Substance, if one cannot enjoy the pleasure of their younger self. Then there’s Elisabeth’s transformation, which renders her stiff and crippled one moment, then limber the next. Fargeat demands some suspension of disbelief from her audience. When so many elements are this rich and coalesce so beautifully (and brutally), it’s hardly an ask.

Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, and Gore Abrams. Directed by: Coralie Fargeat.