Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge follow-up gives Demi Moore the role of a lifetime. Here’s our The Substance review.
Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 rape-revenge film Revenge was a thrillingly bloody affair, so expectations were high for the director’s next project. Thankfully, she has not only met, but exceeded them all with The Substance, a shocking, darkly hilarious body horror.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a TV fitness instructor, fired from her job on her 50th birthday. Devastated, Elisabeth turns to a secretive lab that offers her a new treatment: The Substance. The treatment will create a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of Elisabeth, but there’s a catch. Elisabeth and her other self, Sue (Margaret Qualley), have to take turns in living their lives; while one is out in the world for a week, the other lies on the bathroom floor, hooked up to a feeding tube.
On the surface, The Substance tackles the familiar themes of impossible beauty ideals in Hollywood, but Fargeat focuses on the inherent self-hatred these ideals force upon us. There’s something tragic about how strongly Elisabeth commits to The Substance even if she doesn’t get much out of it. Elisabeth and Sue share no memories, so it’s not as if Elisabeth is living vicariously through Sue, but she’s reached a point where she is desperate enough that knowing a part of her is out in the world, adored and successful, is enough.
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You’ll also be surprised to find out how funny The Substance is. Fargeat isn’t scared to lean towards the silly as well as the horrific. The balance of gore and horror with the silliness is intoxicating and makes The Substance stupidly entertaining. After coming out of the screening, I had to fight back the urge to go back in and demand the projectionist screen it again for me.
The film’s final act is where it may lose you, or perhaps convince you even further just how masterful The Substance is. If you thought you were in for a sophisticated, high-brow film about beauty, you’d be dead wrong. The Substance commits to being a hardcore body horror first and foremost; the film is a constant negotiation between elegance and gore, beauty and horror.
The term ‘elevated horror’ is an infuriating one and on the surface, The Substance seems to appeal for fans who want their horror with a bit of elegance, but nothing too grotesque. However, Fargeat admirably never tries to make The Substance a thoughtful drama posing as a horror film. She wants to shock you to your core, to terrify you, and she’s very good at both.
The Substance, by design, lives and dies on the two lead performances. Thankfully, both Moore and Qualley are game for everything Fargeat throws at them. The Substance is a physical film in every way, forcing the two actresses to put their bodies on the line and seduce and disgust the viewer in equal measure. Qualley is deliciously sexy as Sue, staring down the camera lens with hungry eyes, but this is arguably Moore’s film.
Moore gives a towering, fearless performance as Elisabeth. She channels Elisabeth’s growing desperation and anger with a carefully considered ferocity. Fargeat’s award-winning script gives Moore all the tools to deliver a performance like none other we’ve seen from her. She’s all fire and brimstone in The Substance, a performance that shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed.
Not everyone will enjoy The Substance and there’s a very valid argument to be made that it repeats a familiar narrative with worn stereotypes, but Fargeat tells it with such fury and visual flair that it completely bewitched this writer. It’s a film that crawls under your skin and cements Fargeat as a powerful, skilled director.
The Substance is in UK cinemas on the 20th September.
