Review | ‘The Substance’: the gross-out movie of the year, so much more
Photo Collage by Samantha Rosinski, Staff Photographer
“The Substance” has been hailed as one of the most shocking movies of the year, with layers upon layers of the kind of hype that told me I had to give this a look. After viewing, I can say that it’s earned its stripes of grotesquerie. This film packs quite the punch and will have you leaving the theater in total disbelief, somewhere between nauseous and tickled.
Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is an aging star, fading in the eyes of her employers, who are led by the pompous Harvey (Dennis Quaid). She’s relegated to retirement by her higher-ups, who search for younger talent to anchor the exercise show Elisabeth was once the face of. She stumbles on a solution to her persistent professional problem (her own mortality) when she receives a cryptic invitation from a hospital orderly to try out a breakthrough new drug. She seeks it out and finds access to creating a clone, a younger version of herself she dubs Sue (Margaret Qualley), which gives her career a major boost. However, things get much, much (much!) worse, and to tell you too much more would be to deny you the real pleasure of watching it all unfold.
From the moment this movie opens, reality feels askew. The film’s opening shot makes us watch the unsettling sight of an egg getting injected with a mysterious solution as it gains a second yolk. This is a movie that wraps itself around you, director and writer Coralie Fargeat builds up the tension leading to Elisabeth’s plunge into embracing the substance, and she’s constantly prodding and poking the audience even before any transformation happens. This state of unease reflects Elisabeth’s own dissatisfaction with her circumstances and what’s become of her career. Even the most unassuming, everyday behavior is shown in a way that elicits disgust. Maybe the grossest scene of the movie is Quaid eating shrimp in the loudest, most obnoxious way you could imagine.
And I must shout out Quaid, who’s playing it so loud I thought the speakers might bust. I’m not sure if the work he’s done here is good in a technical sense, but it suits the twisted, off-kilter atmosphere Fargaet creates. This off-kilter design is present in the film from top to bottom, from the editing to the sound (so much squelching) to the production design.
The world that Elisabeth inhabits is bright and loud, but ultimately isolating. Fargaet builds a world distinctly separate from our own (I gave up on trying to tie this movie’s reality to our own the moment Qualley went on a talk show called “The Show”), but emphasizes some of the worst hallmarks that it shares.
The human body has proved quite the fertile terrain for the horror genre, where filmmakers like David Cronenberg have brought the most horrific visions of what that body could become and what foul creatures we could morph into to life. “The Substance” is no different, but also sort of strays from the path. Its horrors are rooted in the psychological as much as they are physical. As Elisabeth’s body begins to deteriorate rather precipitously, she finds herself unable to wean herself off of the draw of being someone she isn’t: a younger, more marketable version, as her bosses believe, and she’s begun to believe herself.
Fargaet shows you the reality of Elisabeth and Sue’s productions, demonstrating that these images we tune into that become resonant culturally are manufactured and, therefore, managed, molded, packaged and sold. Whether they be of youth, beauty or any other desirable quality or thing, the billboard of alternate self that Elisabeth stares out of her window at is seemingly a mirror, but really just fiction. Even as the movie gets more dire and turns up the horrors, it never loses that central idea. Elisabeth’s own insecurities only drive the transforming of flesh into something monstrous, only fueling her own self-doubt. Beneath the blood and guts, this is really a somber drama about one woman’s struggle with accepting her own aging body. That struggle is only made worse by the titular Substance.
Qualley has started to build a real knack for working in the sandboxes of some pretty singular filmmakers doing pretty strange work – a freak of the week if you will – whether it be putting on a southern twang for Ethan Coen’s “Drive-Away Dolls” or working back to back with Yorgos Lanthimos on “Poor Things” and “Kinds of Kindness.” Her work here is no different, but her performance is supported and surpassed by that of her other half, Moore. I have to give Moore her flowers partially just because of all that she goes through, all of the transformations that she undergoes. He maintains the center of the movie in the midst of all the insanity. She is the beating heart of this movie even as she turns into a monstrous creature. Obscured by more and more inhuman tweaks and additions, her performance shines through.
This is a movie that wants to shock you above all else, and that would be annoying if it didn’t so thoroughly achieve that. This is the kind of movie that if I were to simply recount everything that happens in it, I don’t think you’d believe me. The madness of the final minutes and the wide eyes and agape mouths of my friends and I as we watched it will stay with me for a long time. So, gather your (non-squeamish) friends, skip the snacks (just to be safe, this thing gets pretty vivid in the things it inflicts upon the human form) and rejoice at this rollercoaster of a movie.
