The Plot: Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is a fading Hollywood star due to the inevitable fact of her age. She presents a fitness show, but slimy TV executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid) is keen to replace her with a younger, more appealing host. The solution is to try The Substance, a secretive and experimental drug that gives birth to a second, younger version of herself called Sue (Margaret Qualley). Each version can only be active for a week at a time, while the languishing other body is fed from a tube. They are one. As Sue draws attention to herself and finds fame in TV-land, both find out that there are side effects. Serious side effects…
The Verdict: Parisian-born writer/director Coralie Fargeat burst onto the filmmaking scene in 2017 with one hell of a statement film: the ferocious feminist survival horror Revenge. It oozed style and substance, was intensely cinematic and had near-Biblical levels of bloodletting. It may not have been widely seen, but it’s worth seeking out in advance of her latest film The Substance. That’s because one can see an immediate progression in her talent, moving on from her standout debut to tackle that difficult second album syndrome. Or rather smash the album to pieces and then reverse engineer it into her own twisted take on the destructive obsession with youth and beauty in the entertainment industry. There’s no sense of any difficulty here. Fargeat has not only stepped up further into the higher echelons of the film industry, but also marked herself out among an exciting new breed of female horror directors including fellow Parisian Julia Ducournau (Raw and Titane) and our own Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother).
Given that horror is predominantly a female-led genre, it’s only natural that the female directing voice should ring louder when it comes to this coruscating dissection of the intense pressure placed on women to be young, fit and beautiful. Fargeat’s Palme d’Or-winning script is a thing of both beauty and ugliness, building up an initially and sadly familiar story of a fading star whose mark on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame is getting increasingly worn and cracked. Fargeat shows as much – a metaphor for the fleeting, fickle nature of fame. Without much caution, Elisabeth spies a solution to her problem in creating a second, younger version of herself with The Substance, but respecting the week on/week off balance is important in this dual relationship. Not that her alter ego Sue much cares, as she’s keen to stay put and this creates some dynamic tension between them. One cannot take something without consequences for both concerned. The phrase ‘you are one’ is oft-repeated in the film, but perhaps it should be ‘you are your own worst enemy’.
Fargeat’s fearless script is a carefully balanced act of its own, mixing in a wild concoction of elements to create a rollercoaster of a film operated by a cackling mad scientist that only speeds up as it reaches its climax. There’s no off-switch on this film and just as well. Once you strap yourself in, you can’t look away. There’s razor-sharp satire with added dripping acid, a heightened sense of reality in which the characters seem to be living on a different plane of existence, frequent drops of humour that are both laugh-out-loud funny and oddly disturbing too. Then there’s the kind of twisting, cracking body horror that would make David Cronenberg proud, whilst also acknowledging the work of landmark make-up effects artists like Rob Bottin and Rick Baker. There’s a grotesque beauty to it all, moving forward with a finale that is both absurdly silly and brilliantly hilarious. It’s a narrow and potentially dangerous narrative tightrope to walk, but Fargeat does so with the kind of confidence and sheer ballsiness that has to be admired.
Special mention must go to Fargeat’s co-conspirator Demi Moore, once the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. The role of Elisabeth might be cutting a little close to the bone in Moore’s own case, but she doesn’t show it. Although she has appeared in a few horrors, Moore is more of a serious dramatic actor who is often regarded for her looks rather than the real talent beneath that. Here she gets to show the kind of gutsy, no-nonsense performance that goes far beyond skin deep (and there’s a lot of skin in this film, not all of which stays on). What Moore does is quite remarkable here: she brings empathy and emotion even when things get far out. The film wears its influences on its sleeve (and other body parts), including a surprisingly touching nod to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The rest is all Fargeat’s creation and what a mad, brilliant and brilliantly mad film it is too.
Brace yourself. The Substance is an extraordinary film that doesn’t so much take a scalpel to the entertainment industry’s ageist obsession with youth – it takes a merciless chainsaw to it and then merrily goes to work re-arranging the body parts. Whatever is going on inside Fargeat’s head, we need to see more of it. Bravo to her for giving birth to this monstrous masterpiece of modern horror.
Rating: 5 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
In short: Monstrous masterpiece
Directed by Coralie Fargeat.
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia.