‘The Substance’ Review
Stars: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Phillip Schurer, Joseph Balderrama, Oscar Lesage, Gore Abrams, Matthew Géczy | Written and Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Writer-director Coralie Fargeat follows her acclaimed 2017 debut Revenge with this delicious body-horror starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Provocative, shocking and shot through with blacker-than-black humour, The Substance is one of the best films of the year.
Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a former Hollywood A-lister who now hosts an aerobics show on TV called Sparkle Your Life. When her slimy boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) casually fires her for being too old, she’s tempted by a hush-hush body enhancement treatment known as The Substance, something she’s quietly offered by a stranger, who hands her a card with a number on it.
However, the treatment comes with a catch – after injecting herself with the substance, Elisabeth will be replaced by a younger clone of herself (Margaret Qualley), who grows out of her spine in a grotesque birth parody and calls herself Sue. She then has to share her life with the younger version, on a one-week-on, one-week-off basis. And as Elisabeth discovers, if either of them overstays that week, there will be physical consequences for the other half.
Fargeat’s directorial style is nothing short of thrilling, combining dynamic editing with inspired use of close-ups, often to delightfully nauseating effect – a shot of Quaid stuffing his mouth with prawns is an early highlight. Similarly, there’s a sense of uninhibited fun running through the film that extends to the overall style, which is filled with bright colours, as if over-compensating for the darkness at its heart.
Fargeat’s satirical script may be a little on the nose in terms of its themes, but that doesn’t make them any less compelling. To that end, she scores several direct hits, skewering the cosmetic industry, fear of ageing, Hollywood misogyny and the seething jealousy, tinged with nostalgic longing, that the old have towards the young, coupled with the destructive self-hatred that comes with trying to cling on to your own youth.
There’s a substance abuse allegory in there too, because youth, as represented by Qualley, is treated as an addiction for Elisabeth, and that addiction slowly destroys her, even though she never gets to enjoy any of the actual benefits herself – they may share the same life, but they don’t feel or experience the same things.
Given the plot set-up, audiences will rightly be expecting some terrific body horror moments and part of the joy of The Substance lies in the way that Fargeat gleefully goes way beyond expectations in that regard, aided by some truly spectacular make-up effects work from Pierre-Olivier Persin. On that note, a repeated line in the script – initially a throwaway misogynist comment – has a fabulously twisted pay-off that has to be seen to be believed.
As for the performances, Demi Moore delivers a frankly astonishing turn as Elisabeth, an utterly fearless portrayal that’s simultaneously painfully raw, heartbreakingly vulnerable and practically exploding with fear and rage. By comparison, Qualley is under-used, but she’s still note perfect as the younger version of Elisabeth, who knows exactly how to get what she wants and becomes increasingly oblivious to the harm she’s doing to herself in the process.
In addition to the sheer craziness of it all, The Substance is filled with enjoyable echoes of the various horror and sci-fi movies that make up its DNA, everything from Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde to vampire films, Showgirls, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, John Frankenheimer’s Seconds and any number of squelchy body horror classics, like Brian Yuzna’s Society.
In short, The Substance is a delight from start to finish, a thrillingly executed, blackly comic horror that confirms Fargeat as a genre director at the very top of her game. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another seven years for her next film.
