Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Coralie Fargeat.
Be. Careful. What. You. Wish. For. The most quaint and playful of all the horror tropes is on full display in this masterful piece of body horror. Not your run of the mill body horror either. This is capital “B” body horror that would even make David Cronenberg blush.
2024’s The Substance is part Sunset Boulevard, part Gremlins, part Infinity Pool, part Seconds from 1966, and part GWAR show. Directed by Coralie Fargeat (Revenge), this film excels in its simplicity while at the same time doling out adroit parables, metaphors, and tropes. Most importantly, the film skillfully subverts each and every bias regarding age, beauty, and the American way.
The Substance follows aging aerobics instructor and TV personality, Elisabeth Sprinkle (Demi Moore), as she’s forced to wind down her illustrious career. During a visit to the doctors office Elisabeth is approached by a perfectly-perfect botox-fueled assistant who lets her in on a life-altering secret, The Substance.
The Substance allows the user to effectively, and somewhat magically, divide all their cells in perfect symmetry, and voi la’, produce a second version of themselves. Better yet, the second version of yourself is super smart, sexy, silky, and smooth. The bumps, warts, and contusions that come with the aging process are gone.
Of course this sci-fi solution to aging is not without hiccups. If you’ve been watching prescription drug advertising for the last 30 years you know full well that there are side effects. In the case of The Substance these are SIDE EFFECTS!
The biggest of the bunch requires you, and super-sexy you, to switch bodies every seven days. Each version of yourself understands that it exist in harmony with the other. The Substance also requires each version to hook up IVs, pull spinal fluid from one another, and feed and care for the other while they’re incapacitated for the week.
Nothing could go wrong, right?
As Elisabeth and her super-sexy self, Sue (Margaret Qualley), begin the ego-driven dance of switching off every seven days, it becomes increasing clear that Sue is the embodiment of Elisabeth’s most frail worries about aging. While Elisabeth and Sue are required to “share” this head and body space, Sue quickly begins to fudge the required metaphysical rules of The Substance.
The last 20+ minutes of the substance pull from the most vile elements of the aforementioned GWAR show, Cronenberg’s nightmares, and the BEST practical effects to hit the big screen in the last 20 years. These special effects are not to be trifled with. They’re exquisite, horrifying, and troubling all within the same scene. More amazing is that the film employs a considerable amount of forced perspective and closeups that require the audience to continually take a hard look at the puss-filled ravages of being a senior citizen.
Should you see The Substance?
The Substance gets one of the most resounding “yes” votes you’ll hear in 2024. Not only does it subvert the idea of it being a corny b-horror movie, it also eloquently subverts the idea of the great Demi Moore as a washed up brat pack star from the 1980s. This film succeeds on nearly all levels and manages to deliver a blood-soaked climax that would even make Oderous Urungus, from GWAR, go running for a barf bucket.