‘The Substance’ is imaginary, but feminine self-hatred is real in this body horror

A scene in the 2004 comedy Mean Girls finds the Plastics, the trio of mean teens at the film’s center, standing in front of a bedroom mirror lamenting their individual physical “flaws”: “huge” hips, ugly calves, “man shoulders.” After a few moments, they turn to look at their silent new recruit, Lindsay Lohan’s Cady Heron, expecting her to chime in with her own expressions of self-disgust. The best she can come up with is morning halitosis.

It’s doubtful Coralie Fargeat had Tina Fey’s skewering of teenage girlhood in mind when dreaming up her deranged body horror tale The Substance. Still, the essence of that satirical scene courses through Fargeat’s cri de cœur against the idealization and demonization of women’s bodies – how a misogynistic culture teaches us to hate ourselves for not looking a certain way and to accept the fate of becoming all but invisible upon reaching a certain age. Many artistic movements have sought to push back against these restraints; The Substance’s weapon of choice to address such ills is a straight-up wrecking ball often exhilarating and occasionally tedious.

The Substance begins turned up to 11, cheekily unbridled in its visual and narrative un-subtlety: bright, bold color schemes; big and broad performances; bodies torn asunder. Demi Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, a Jane Fonda-esque aerobics TV star who turns the big 5-0 and is promptly ousted from her gig in Hollywood. Dejected, she drives home, only to get distracted by the sight of her smiling face being unceremoniously ripped down from a billboard.

She collides with another car, and is miraculously fine. Nevertheless, her nurse slips her a USB drive labeled “The Substance,” with a phone number to call and a tantalizing message: “It changed my life.”

A self-administered injection of the Substance serum creates a younger, hotter version of Elisabeth – “Sue,” played by Margaret Qualley – but only for seven days at a time. After that period is up, she must switch back to her older self and repeat the process again and again … or else. “Remember you are one,” reads the card inside her supply kit.

As these stories go, Fargeat targets an expected source for Elisabeth’s drastic choice – men – though only on the periphery. Dennis Quaid hams it up to the nth degree in a handful of scenes as Harvey, the skeevy, boorish TV exec who flippantly fires Elisabeth and eagerly hires Sue.

More interestingly, The Substance is an internal character study, existing in an exciting year that’s seen a few female and non-binary filmmakers use rich, immersive storytelling to convey complicated relationships to the corporeal self, including Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow and Marielle Heller’s forthcoming adaptation of the novel Nightbitch. Fargeat’s intention isn’t only to call out the external pressure women face to take extreme measures to achieve a constricted definition of desirability; she wishes to plunge the viewer into a vicarious experience of the physical and psychological toll it all wrecks.

Following that initial injection, Sue’s violent, terrorizing “birth” from Elisabeth’s body is a technical marvel and, like the vast majority of the movie, it’s not for the squeamish. (The visual and special effects team is made up of Pierre-Olivier Persin, Bryan Jones, Pierre Procoudine-Gorsky, and Jean Miel. We’ve come a long, long way since David Cronenberg’s The Fly.) New cells are formed, skin rips, blood oozes, and Fargeat takes her time over several excruciating minutes to ensure your senses are tapped and engaged by every mortifying bit of it.

This early scene is barely adequate preparation for what follows for the remainder of the runtime, as Elisabeth/Sue becomes consumed by an existential pestilence. Sue, perky and “perfect,” replaces Elisabeth as the new aerobics It-girl during her waking hours, while Elisabeth spends hers resenting her other half’s ascendance and her own continued existence as an old has-been. The seven day “balance” of time begins tipping in one direction, and things take a turn for the worse.

This is a towering showcase for Qualley and especially Moore, who might be channeling the abrasive, ever-spiraling spirit of Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest and late-period Bette Davis. On paper her character is thinly drawn, no family or friends to speak of, no backstory other than her identity as a faded TV star; Elisabeth and Sue are instead pure id, powerful vessels through which to deliver Fargeat’s primal scream.

That primal scream is righteous and effective, to a point. Fargeat keeps upping the ante relentlessly, with Moore and Qualley totally committed to the absurdity and monstrosity of their characters’ shared trajectory. Some viewers will indulge this excess wholeheartedly, but during one particularly nasty sequence in the third act, the brilliant motif began to feel like a cudgel wielded with such brute force that my senses were dulled. I found myself both in awe of the audacity and uncertain whether the messaging was losing its bite because it was just so much.

At the same time the over-the-top approach feels like an argument in itself, given how little has actually changed even in the wake of campaigns like the body positive movement. The goal posts have merely moved.

Curves and body fat are socially acceptable and even celebrated, depending upon where they live on the body, and who’s inhabiting that body. (And if you don’t have them, you can always buy them at your own risk.) Hollywood’s standards for older women have loosened up compared to decades ago, though the unspoken definition of “aging gracefully” remains constricting; we marvel at actresses like Jennifer Lopez (55), Halle Berry (58), and even Moore (61) precisely because they don’t look their ages. (Moore has been candid about her past struggles with disordered eating and aging within the industry.) It makes sense that a movie like The Substance would come along and unleash such unhinged fury at the thought of it all.

The film’s final protracted shot is a stunning vision, at once grotesque and cathartic. When it unfurls, following nearly two and a half hours of all manner of jabbing, slurping, pummeling, bleating, and rotting – not to mention butts; so many butts – it is, surprisingly, relatively subdued and almost soothing. It’s the kind of bold conclusion which elicits deep admiration for its creator’s ambitions as well as a sense of accomplishment within the self for having endured the ever-escalating madness all the way through to the end.