MY CALL: Wow. This film is… an experience. Everything about it is awesome, so much of the set and lighting and imagery is scintillating, yet this will make you wince from graphic medical imagery, psychological abuse, addiction, depression and gruesome body horror. MOVIES LIKE The Substance: For eternal youth-gone wrong, go for Death Becomes Her (1992) and Rejuvenator (1988). For more recently released, brilliantly made horror, Smile (2022), Smile 2 (2024), Heretic (2024), Immaculate (2024), Crimes of the Future (2022), X (2022) and Infinity Pool (2023).
This film could serve as a photographer’s portfolio. Slimy TV exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid; Pandorum) oozes gross old man chauvinism. Writer and director Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) weaponizes his worst qualities into an audio-visual spectacle as we watch and hear him tear and squeeze and smack and slurp his bright orange prawn lunch. In stark contrast is the aging but perfect and gorgeous Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore; Parasite), who strolls down pristine hallways of bright solid colors and whose hair is never a strand out of place. The colors, lighting, wardrobe and set design make this film a visual splendor.
After an accident sends her to the hospital, someone slips her some promotional material for The Substance, a treatment that rejuvenates at the level of cell replication. Of course, Elisabeth pursues this probably black market drug, obtaining it through the most shady of means, and then injecting herself with what I can only compare to the green glowing serum from Re-Animator (1985). Have Resident Evil (2002), Death Becomes Her (1992) and Rejuvenator (1988) taught us nothing?
What follows is the cell replication scene; the emergence of her other self “Sue” (Margaret Qualley; Kinds of Kindness, Poor Things, The Leftovers). It’s visceral. At first, the gore is almost medical with crude wound stitching, graphic injections and fluid drawings, at-home transfusions, emerging from a body like it was a chrysalis, the spilling out of guts, pus-crusted wounds, and advanced disease-like skin and joint ailments.
Once in the swing of her use of The Substance, Elisabeth’s other/younger self “Sue” lives with a desire to forget her old self. However, this lifestyle comes with very strict rules. And breaking those rules has permanent degenerative consequences. Those consequences seem to include the psychological embattlement between Elisabeth and Sue, sowing distrust and eventually trying to sabotage each other. One side of her becomes addicted to youthful fame, the other side of her a reflection of the cost of that addiction. This wanders us into some ambitious special effects territory and some very graphic, very brutal, very bloody violence.
The finale transitions us from an already big suspension of disbelief and transports us into a slapstick horror fantasy that smacks strongly of Society (1989) and a GWAR concert! It gets really, really wildly gross.
This film really is something. I think it makes for a great medical horror, body horror, psychological thriller, and addiction horror. Moreover, the acting, writing, set work… everything about this film is awesome. This is not a film to skip and I better see some Oscar nods for this!
