Dear lord… I think I’m traumatized. I’ve been on this Earth a long time and I’ve seen some seriously messed up movies… but The Substance might just be the most f’ed up thing I’ve ever seen in a theater. To think mainstream audiences might wander into this film… dear god… and to think gorehounds will too! Someone put every Cronenberg movie by every Cronenberg working in a blender and put it on super secret puree mode and then hyper-charged it with 1.21 gigawatts, exploding it all over the theater. Not to exaggerate or anything.
The Substance stars Demi Moore as a fading star who gets invited to try a new beauty product known as (not at all ominously) The Substance (and definitely not The Stuff). The compound makes a new, younger you who can go out into the world and be pretty. Until one day where maybe she wants more time in the world and then it’s a countdown to total meltdown.
Yeah, this is a hardcore body horror film… almost the exact film I thought Skinecare was gonna be… only gorier. It’s actually got some Maxxxine in it too… put those two in the same blender with all those Cronenbergs, and imagine the even bigger splattery mess.
But it doesn’t start too extreme… there’s some body horror to be sure, but nothing the average movie goer hasn’t seen. It’s largely a commentary on the objectification of women… and what they do to stay young and beautiful. And, to be honest, it speaks to aging men too… we can all get in on the self loathing!
The flick remains in a borderline satire (sometimes camp) state, containing various awkward moments of nudity and aging. In fact, the ladies in this movie put a lot of themselves out there and I’m sure they only did it for their female director – Coralie Fargeat – who previously made the hardcore and cathartic film Revenge.
Demi Moore plays the aging actress and, let’s be real, she looks too amazing to play this role. Margaret Qualley plays her young variant… not the younger her since A) we know what Moore looked like when young, and B) nobody realizes she’s a younger Moore so I guess she’s just a young, hot person and not meant to be an actual clone.
Which actually begs the question if this beauty treatment makes any damn sense at all… and it really doesn’t. Your younger you is not you and you have no memory of what she does… so how is this a helpful treatment? But I think taking it literally is missing the forest for the exploding body parts.
Also – and hilariously – Dennis Quad plays the smarmiest, scummiest, skeeviest, grossest Hollywood executive (his intro shot is so chef’s kiss artistic, I knew we were in the hands of an expert director who just wanted us to stare up his nose a little bit). What’s hilarious is that he’s also starring in the Reagan biopic and if the conservative producers of that film knew they’d be competing with him in this film, they’d have hired Kevin Sorbo to play the president instead. Good on Quaid for taking the job and chucking aside good taste.
At some point the film goes into hyperactive neo maxie zoom dweebie overdrive… a total global body horror meltdown that gets so extreme, I think the director was daring normies to keep watching. Hell, she was probably daring gorehounds to keep watching too. I’m not joking when I say this might be the grossest plunge into the pits of repulsion, revulsion, and vileness I’ve seen in a movie theater. The jury’s still out on if it’s the grossest movie ever… I think Dead Alive/Braindead might still have that locked down… and there are some more psychologically disturbing films too… Martyrs comes to mind (which is also pretty vile too, to be fair).
And if the above paragraph sounds like a feature, not a bug, this movie might be for you. But if you have what people might call “good taste” or “fine breeding” you might want to stay away. If you want to play “how much more of this can I take?”, then check it out.
To be clear though, it isn’t just a masterpiece of gross out practical effects… it is that. But it’s how it made me feel. Not just grossed out – that’s easy – but squirmy and uncomfortable and eyes-popping-out startled and amazed. Totally unsure where it was going next. Not just about how far the director was willing to go, but how the characters descend into madness. It’s a uniquely impressive work on both the stomach and the mind.
The Substance is a hell of a thing. I can’t believe it’s gonna get a mainstream theatrical release with as overkill gross as it is. And I love it… both the movie and the scenario where normies stumble blind into it. We can all be traumatized together
Score: 96