The Substance
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month, I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, and some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc.
SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.
the substance
“Who wants to be the next Elisabeth Sparkle?” It’s an age-old story (no pun intended) that everyone wants to be younger. Feel better, look better. Finding that fountain of youth. What if you could? 2024’s The Substance jumps into a lot of those themes not to mention some serious body horror.
Coralie Fargeat directs this piece, which in the simplest terms, is about a woman being phased out because of her age. An opening overhead shot of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as time passes. Heat, foot traffic, etc. until it begins to become cracked. The name on the star? Elisabeth Sparkle who is a former movie star now doing an exercise television program. She loves the job but is soon fired by the studio executive named Harvey (coincidence?) played by Dennis Quaid. His character is wonderfully portrayed as a stereotypical male who only views women as ratings for his programs. Such a great job showing how vile he is with the urinal POV shot where he’s essentially peeing on the audience while on the phone (doesn’t bother to wash his hands of course) Then the extreme closeups of him at the restaurant stuffing his face with shrimp and the nasty squishy noises it makes along with the food in his teeth and the schmutz all over his hands. It’s so gross but done so, so well that we truly dislike this character which of course is the idea. When asked by Elisabeth why she’ll no longer be able to do this job he of course has no valid answer and runs off when he sees someone he knows.
She hears about The Substance, which is a shady, totally illegal drug that promises a better version of yourself. A one-time serum you inject which no one in their right mind would do so of course she does, passes out, and that version is born out her existing body. The two need to coexist and switch out every week – no exceptions. You probably know how this will end. The new version is named Sue. Sue gets the new, hot exercise show, everyone loves her, especially Harvey who picks her to host the big New Years Eve broadcast.
Sue and Elisabeth don’t play nice. Sue goes a bit over the time limit, and it ages Elisabeth in her hand. Sue lives a seemingly perfect life and couldn’t care less what happens to her other half. After she again goes past the 7-day limit, Elisabeth has aged tremendously and her anger manifests. She begins completely gorging on anything and everything and descends into this horrid, nightmare cooking scene. She is seen watching Sue on TV and yelling back mocking her all while preparing dish after dish of French cuisine (all from a cookbook Harvey gave her as a farewell gift – how thoughtful). Shots of sausages, and eggs, and whole chickens. A truly foul gastro sight to watch. The next day we see the apartment littered in half eaten food and everything covered in ingredients, etc. It’s so disgusting and things are clearly not going the way she hoped. She finally decides to terminate the treatment after Sue has taken all her vitality but brings her back and a fight begins where Sue finally kills her creator.
Sue goes on with the New Years show but soon realizes she can’t continue without the stabilizer fluid. She certainly can’t have this so decides to inject herself with the clearly labeled one time dose only serum. She injects herself while tearfully asking for a better version of herself. What she gets is a horribly, mutated monster aptly named Monstro ElisaSue. A fusion of Elisabeth and Sue that certainly isn’t human. It returns to the theater to put on the show until the crowd turns violently on the creature. Like The Phantom of the Opera, or Quasimodo, it begs to be treated just like everyone else. Perhaps there is humanity left in it. After slicing open one of the many body parts it has, we get one of the bloodiest scenes I’ve ever seen. This rivals the lawnmower scene from Dead Alive! The audience gets pummeled in blood as it rains from everywhere. Chaos, screaming, fighting. Finally, the monster turns to a pile of ooze after a fall outside and the remaining face of Elisabeth crawls back her star on the walk of fame where she melts away, later to be cleaned up by a floor cleaning machine.
Aging and becoming irrelevant is an innate human fear. We are afraid our bodies and minds will betray and fail us. We won’t be beautiful anymore. We won’t be thin and tan. Women feel this especially and even further in the entertainment world. Fargeat does such a great job of bringing this to life and making it an unimaginable nightmare. The character of Elisabeth becomes such a posterchild for what could happen if we try to turn back the clock. We can’t control these things. Her greatest fears of aging became worse than she could have ever imagined.
Tremendous makeup and practical effects in this film make it so good and while I enjoyed Demi Moore, I didn’t think she was next level like so many have said. There isn’t much dialogue in this film overall, but it isn’t needed. Really loved what I perceived as homages to other horror films too. A few scenes in the bathroom and shower for Psycho, the color of the bathroom from The Shining, and the Monstro ElisaSue was like a mix of The Fly and The Thing! Great shots of the lonely environment that is Elisabeth’s apartment when she becomes terribly isolated mixed with bold colors of jackets and spandex. Deservedly nominated for Best Film and Best Actress at the Academy Awards. The Substance is a two-hour message of how we view ourselves and the madness that can take place. Remember, pretty girls should always smile…
Enjoy the trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRd1KZZ76_o