‘The Substance’ is Endlessly Ambitious and Audacious [Review]

To start, The Substance, a new satirical body horror movie from writer/director Coralie Fargeat, is an absolute breath of fresh air in a movie landscape that quite frankly, for the most part, lacks creative ambition on the level of The Substance. Especially movies that are released theatrically. After going back and revisiting Fargeat’s first feature film from 2017, Revenge, I definitely had an expectation going into The Substance that it would be violent, unique, audacious and, well, violent, just like Revenge was.

I also had the built in expectation mostly based on the early screenings and Cannes Film Festival reception (where Fargeat won Best Screenplay for The Substance) that the body horror extremity and boldly fresh ideas would mirror the work of genre greats like David Cronenberg and David Lynch. Seeing those comparisons inherently sets the bar very high. But with all of that hype plus a cast that includes Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid and of course, the great Demi Moore as the lead, I was cautiously optimistic. There was nothing cautious about The Substance, and I left the movie feeling more optimistic about movies in general than I have with anything else I’ve seen this year. So, let’s get into it…

Demi Moore. Icon? 

Let’s kick things off with a brief Demi Moore conversation. The word ‘icon’ gets thrown around a little too loosely. So, I hate to be hyperbolic with a prisoner of the moment mindset. However, I found Demi Moore’s performance in The Substance to be a solidification of her ‘icon’ status in the movie business. Calling Demi Moore a movie ‘icon’ feels like an overstatement but also kind of feels like an understatement somehow. That may seem nonsensical but hear me out. Demi Moore’s filmography includes an ’80s run with the Brat Pack in classics like St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night, to the ’90s where she solidified herself as a leading performer and was eventually paid that way later in the decade on G.I. Jane, to then, well, really nothing notable at all in the aughts. So, I brought ‘icon’ into this discussion, but the filmography simply disagrees. But Moore’s persona has carried so much weight both on and off screen turning her into a pop cultural phenomenon.

I prefer to keep the discussion on the rails and keep this to her work, but with her marriages to Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher, presence in magazines and on TV and on movie screens, with her insanely likable persona where Moore from a young age through the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s was like Helen of Troy. Ask anyone, and they will agree. I find Moore to be a really great performer, but I find her best quality that she brings to movies is her likable persona.

Wrangling this back into the discussion around The Substance, and why this performance cements her iconic status, is because her character in The Substance, Elisabeth Sparkle, is such a unique creation. The performance itself takes Moore’s iconography and almost uses it against the audience, but also as a wink-wink, so to speak, to the audience. The Elisabeth Sparkle character flips the Demi Moore archetype we have known and loved on her head, but then I was thinking about it after, and did it really flip the Demi Moore archetype on its head? Moore’s 2000s were shaky on the professional side, 2010s even shakier, so how much of that experience bled into the character? I found Moore’s performance in The Substance to be such a perfectly unique marriage of performer and iconography baggage. We have to move onto the plot now to clarify a few things there. But overall, Moore is so outstanding in The Substance and I really wanted to lead with that… 

“There’s been a slight misuse of The Substance“

Like I mentioned, The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, an Academy Award winning actress and longtime aerobics instructor on a hit daytime show. Sparkle has just turned fifty, and it is pretty obvious that she is on the back nine (tail end) of her career. As is the case with this character archetype, Sparkle is incredibly aware of this fact, wears it on her face, but is still hanging on to the rope for dear life. She isn’t exactly in denial, but she is clearly despondent.

We are eventually introduced to Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid. Yes, the name Harvey alone should tell you everything you need to know about this character. Think Harvey Weinstein. Harvey is a pig of a studio executive and in one of the most grotesque scenes to ever take place so early in a movie, fires Sparkle from her show while gobbling up a full plate of shrimp so juicy and wet that they are exploding in his mouth. Yuck. Enter, this ‘medicine?’, the titular substance, introduced to the Demi Moore character from a porcelain-looking man. This mysterious substance is acquired in about as sketchy a way as possible, and allows for you, in this case Sparkle, to inject this serum, which creates another, younger, more beautiful, ‘you’. The catch, every seven days, without exception, the characters need to switch bodies while the other lays on the cold bathroom floor taking in fluids. This is when we are introduced to the electric Margaret Qualley.

As seen on the movie poster, but to avoid specifics, the transformation that takes place is jarring and spectacular. A real treat with a live audience. The white-on-white bathroom with the tile that looks beyond uncomfortable to lay on with the abusive treatment of human skin felt more like Clive Barker’s Hellraiser than it did David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. And in a stunning sequence that took real commitment from the actresses, they are quite exposed, fully naked, for a while. It’s rare to see something so intoxicatingly erotic yet so unbearably disgusting at the same time. The rest of The Substance plays out as a constant internal battle that is literally externalized and intoxicating to watch. The Substance won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, so the storytelling wasn’t just experimental and weird for weirds sake. The Substance had a real structure to it that made it easy to enjoy, simple enough to follow, while also maintaining the outlandish substance that makes it so unique…

Coralie Fargeat is a talent to keep an eye on. 

Good time here to pivot to Coralie Fargeat. With two feature films under her belt, both having high voltage energy with explosive characters, classical storytelling and new age, state-of-the-art filmmaking technique. When talking about modern auteurs who have the well-rounded ability to have a specific voice and style that is synonymous with them, meaning the filmmaker is also the star of the movie, then Fargeat has to be included in that list now. Other modern names in the genre that come to mind in this category are Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, to pull a few examples. I’m not a stickler for this stuff, but I definitely nerd the f–k out for filmmakers who write, direct and have a specific voice where you can watch a movie and almost know who the filmmaker is.

I don’t necessarily subscribe to the Andrew Sarris auteur theory per se, meaning the director is the end all be all of a movie, but I have a deep appreciation and love for movies that are clearly conceived and executed by a singular mind. Of course, there is so much that goes into the success of a movie. In The Substance in particular, the production design, special effects and original score / use of sound play a huge role in the playability of this movie. But attributing something you see on screen to a singular person is just more fun. It’s like comparing athletes or painters or novelists. So, I’m excited about what the future holds for Fargeat, who has a unique and audacious flair in her work…

Margaret Qualley is an up-and-coming superstar.

F–k yeah. Margaret Qualley. Demi Moore is a perfect casting choice, but so is Margaret Qualley as Sue, or to make it simpler, younger Elisabeth. Even though the mysterious minds behind the substance keep on reiterating that Elisabeth and Sue are not two different people, they are actually one person, Qualley still brings the character of Sue to life as her own separate character. Qualley is such an expressive performer and does an absolutely incredible job of wearing everything on her face, saying things just with her expressions. She commands the screen in such a unique way, and I would be stunned if she didn’t become massive very soon. Even though Qualley has star quality, she takes on these incredibly strange obscure character roles. I feel like a decent comparison would be ’90s Brad Pitt, when he would take on bizarre characters and bring them to life, taking over the movie while doing so. Qualley has that same effect where you can just tell someone has the ‘it’ factor, but revels in offbeat character work. The Sue character in The Substance has an insatiable aura where she just commands attention, love and respect. It’s a hard character to pull off and Qualley crushed it…

The Substance is technically superb.

Even with all of the spectacular performances and brilliant writing, the technical aspects of The Substance blew me away the most. From the Terry Gilliam style camera angles and coverage to the synth theme, the bizarro-world Los Angeles and gnarly special effects, The Substance is a technical spectacle across the board. The visual concepts are fairytale esque which works so well for a story like this. For example, there is a billboard just beyond Elisabeth’s Hollywood Hills home that is always visible. Almost to the point where it looks like a painting in her home. To me, this billboard is so akin thematically to the billboard in The Great Gatsby, of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. And this is such a brilliant choice because it is a triumphant reminder of success but also a gloomy reminder of misery. Just like in Gatsby to an extent. Everything that the story is saying thematically is conveyed all over the place, in so many different ways, especially with the opening and closing of the movie. I want to avoid spoiling the ending of The Substance, obviously, but if you follow this stuff closely then you already know that the last act is an insane and endless nightmare of Lynchian dreamlike proportions. The use of excessive blood is very much like Fargeat’s previous movie, Revenge. But it isn’t disgusting blood, it is fun blood, in a weird way. I don’t know how they filmed what they filmed, but it is truly incredible to see with a crowd. Although, I do have a bone to pick with that final act…

The Substance isn’t without its flaw.

The major flaw in The Substance is that it feels like an endless nightmare, literally. For a movie that plays well over two hours, it moves pretty quickly in the first and second act. But once we got to that final act, I found it to just keep going and going almost to the point where I was sick of it. To clarify, I love this movie, and I love so much of the final act, but the continuous slog of an ending wore me down and kind of took away from my enjoyment of the movie, and especially the finale.

Other than the pace becoming an issue towards the tail end, I found The Substance to be a pretty tight movie. The writing, visuals, sound, and performances are all on point. Qualley and Moore were of course perfectly cast, but I was surprised by the cartoonishly outlandish performance from Dennis Quaid. In a part where I really wouldn’t expect him to play, the Harvey character being so loud and obnoxious, I thought Quaid really hammed it up for the part, but it wasn’t distracting at all. What I love most about Quaid in The Substance though is that while The Substance plays in theaters, so does Reagan, where Quaid stars as Ronald Reagan. Talk about a hilariously inverted pair of films. Ronald Reagan, may he rest in peace, would most likely be besides himself watching The Substance. So, a Dennis Quaid 2024 double feature of Reagan & The Substance is bound for a repertory theater that has a sense of humor someday. Maybe me (eyeball emoji) …

All in all:

I found The Substance to be a refreshingly bold and ambitious piece of moviemaking. Did it run a little long in the end? Yes. Every cow has its spots. I exited The Substance, and my only gripe was “eh, they could have tightened up that third act”. The overarching message that smacks you right in the face didn’t feel as obnoxiously heavy-handed as I had expected going in. The fairytale like quality of the story and the dreamlike version of Hollywood allows for the audience buy-in completely because you aren’t as worried about logistical nitpicks like how these two lead characters can just disappear from the world for seven days at a time without raising any eyebrows. I don’t care how lonely you are or if you are a scientific creation, someone will ask “what’s up with Elisabeth/Sue”. And also, how in the hell does this substance actually work. No. You won’t be thinking about that. The story is able to breathe because of this deeply disturbing and beautifully groovy world that is built, and the incredible performances that bring it all to life.

Unfortunately, The Substance only grossed $3 million in its opening weekend. It will inevitably make decent money, especially globally, but I hope that a big swing like this isn’t deemed too weird to succeed at the box office. The movie theater experience made The Substance so much more enjoyable. Unfortunately for you, it’s already out of theaters in most areas. But go check it out if it pops back up in a second-run theater. And definitely check this one out when it is available at home. It’s well worth it…

Wicked Horror Rating: 8.5/10

From Mubi, The Substance is playing exclusively in theaters as of September 20th, 2024.