Review: The Substance

Written by: Tony Lazlo, CC2K Staff Writer

In The Substance, writer-director Coralie Fargeat literally and figuratively deconstructs the human form—especially the female form—in an eerie, stomach-turning parable of vanity and ambition that could’ve been jointly introduced by Rod Serling and the Cryptkeeper. (And in case it needs to be said, that’s a grand-high compliment coming from me.)

There’s a particular kind of tone that all our great genre anthology works hit—from The Twilight Zone to Black Mirror to Tales from the Crypt to Creepshow—a demented moral clarity from on high as the storyteller cocks an eyebrow right before holding forth with a tale of righteous comeuppance. The Substance speaks from such a vantage point.

I’ll get to the meat (pun intended) of Fargeat’s story in a moment, but first I want to heap praise on how she imagines a heightened alternate Los Angeles that’s trapped in a retrowave/midcentury/Miami Vice 1980s, with glass bricks, velvet pastels, and a gaudy color palette. She populates this off-kilter tinseltown with a grotesque lineup of supporting players who feel like they walked out of I’d Buy That For A Dollar. Fargeat’s whole world feels like a background sketch from 30 Rock lurched off Dr. Frankenstein’s table only to discover it was a background detail in an episode of Black Mirror directed by David Cronenberg. 

Fargeat’s story engine is a simple one: an aging Hollywood star undergoes a black market medical procedure, the titular Substance, to generate a younger double of herself. She must care for both bodies following a complicated set of rules. Most notably, she must switch back into her older self every week. Needless to say, she disobeys the rules, and it unleashes disaster. 

Much praise has been heaped on the shoulders of dual leads Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, and it’s well deserved. Moore in particular gives us a raw and raunchy performance, equal parts Day of the Locust and Weird Sister. Both women spend a nontrivial amount of the movie either naked, wearing prosthetics, or covered in buckets of blood. I can’t even imagine how physically challenging these performances must’ve been.

I mentioned Tales from the Crypt earlier, and The Substance pleasantly reminded me of “The Switch,” directed by no less than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Women will always have a tougher time dealing with body dismorphia and the expectations surrounding image, but if there’s a guy who can relate to those themes, Schwarzenegger’s one of ‘em. Like The Substance, it involves a vain, aging protagonist who makes a devil’s bargain to regain their youth. It’d make a nice preshow for a future screening, I suspect.

Fargeat also peppers her story with a several explicit nods to The Shining—particularly Kubrick’s film—channeling that story’s theme of consumption; like the Overlook, Hollywood swallows Demi Moore (and Margaret Qualley) whole, but unlike the Overlook, this movie’s protagonist gets spat out, too, leading to the finale’s much-ballyhoo’ed body horror, which compares favorably to works like The Thing and Basket Case, all with some Argento-esque blood-floods that recall the tsunami of gore that greets poor Wendy Torrance.

Highest possible recommendation.