The Substance bundles several movies into one ungainly package: Midnight-black comedy mingles with more spraying blood than a GWAR binge on Youtube. Stinging social satire flows through flourishes of The Twilight Zone and Death Becomes Her. The result is alternately funny, heartbreaking, visceral, and irritating. And nothing about any of it is subtle. This is one of those movies that’s easy to admire but difficult to enjoy. It’s well-made and extremely well-acted, but the story is also overlong, erratic, and over-the-top. The result is as brilliant as it is frustrating.
Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, the story opens on Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), an acclaimed Hollywood actress. Her career parallels Jane Fonda’s 80s transition from Oscar darling to aerobics guru. Unfortunately, even that well dries up for Elisabeth, and her pig boss (Dennis Quaid) callously fires her. Her grief and desperation cause her to get into a horrific car accident, from which she emerges miraculously unscathed. A handsome, sympathetic nurse slips her a USB drive, proclaiming her as a perfect candidate for The Substance. When Elisabeth gets home, curiosity and depression get the better of her, and she plugs in the drive.
Turns out, The Substance is a bizarre, fantastical item peddled from a back-alley company/cult. It promises a younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of you. At first, Elisabeth is rightfully skeptical and repulsed at something so blatantly too-good-to-be-true. She chucks the USB in the bin and goes on her way. Later, after a night of martinis and wallowing in her own thoughts, the drunken insecurity and undeniable fascination gnaw at Elisabeth, and she finds herself digging through the trash and dialing the company.
A few days later, Elizabeth opens the mail and finds a strange home kit for The Substance: Syringes, tubing, astronaut food, and ominous directions for use. The Substance itself resembles that radioactive goop they use to make your insides glow for a scan. What follows is a shocking, audacious moment of pure horror, and I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’ll just say that the Substance produces a younger version of Elisabeth (Margaret Qualley), just as the USB narration promised.
Unfortunately, this transformation comes with quite a few rules: Every seven days, Elisabeth must switch consciousness back to her other body. When she lives in one body, the other lies dormant on the ground, and it must be fed an IV of Skylab gruel. Everything between the two bodies must be kept in balance, and that balance must always be respected. Violation of any rules will carry dire consequences for Elisabeth and her young identity, now known as Sue.
As you might expect, the balance is not respected. Vibrant, twenty-something Sue claims Elisabeth’s old job and becomes an instant A-lister. Meanwhile, Elisabeth becomes sedentary and sullen, shutting into her luxury condo and growling at the TV. She resents Sue’s sudden fame, and the hedonistic lifestyle that comes with it. Sue grows annoyed with having to spend a week locked into Elisabeth’s quiet, middle-aged loneliness. Ultimately, open war breaks out between them, a battle that will threaten the lives of both personas.
To her credit, Fargeat takes this story and sends it off the rails. By its final act, The Substance is deliciously delirious and drenched in blood. Fargeat’s fearlessness spreads into the performances of Moore and Qualley, both of whom plunge into their increasingly disparate characters with reckless abandon. This is an acting showcase, and that reason alone makes The Substance a compelling watch.
Fargeat’s script also does a fine job of rendering Elisabeth and Sue into distinct and equally tragic characters. They become vulnerable and doomed in their own ways, and we cringe as they barrel toward the collision that will annihilate them both. For every moment of wicked, knowing comedy in The Substance, a current of sadness flows beneath it.
For all that praise, one flaw damn near sinks this movie like a rogue iceberg. I don’t know if it’s a choice of performance or how the character is written, but Quaid doesn’t so much chew the scenery as rampage through it, like Godzilla into Tokyo. His pig-boss is hammy and distractingly obnoxious. (Fargeat even goes further on-the-nose by naming him Harvey.) This movie makes so many strong points on modern misogyny, the Quaid character feels dropped from a cartoon. For a much better example, check out Dabney Coleman’s unrepentant hog in Tootsie. He was a sexist, but also had flashes of charm and savvy, thus making him feel more realistic and dangerous. A more thoughtful villain would have greatly elevated the movie.
All in all, The Substance has the stuff of a near-classic, with only a few blemishes holding it back. (140 minutes is punishingly long for such a lean story.) One key warning: If blood-spattered cinema is not your bag, avoid this film at all costs. Fargeat’s bonkers finale is absolutely slathered in gore. Otherwise, this is an epic horror-comedy: Flawed, but ferocious.
140 min. R. Mubi.
