The Substance (2024) Review

“Control yourself!”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Eternity is something everyone craves because we always want things to last forever. Every now and then though, we come to terms life doesn’t work that way.


PLOT


The Substance follows celebrated celebrity Elizabeth Sparkle be dismissed of her long running aerobics program by her producer Harvey due to being too old to pull viewers in. After suffering a car accident that originated from being distracted seeing one of her billboard posters get taken down, a young nurse covertly gives her a flash drive to the titular black market drug that’ll promise a younger version of herself that in her eyes could be more beautiful and perfect. Elisabeth does order a shipment for herself and injects a single use activator serum, which in turn generates her younger self generate from her body. This younger variant, that would call herself Sue, does see the back she came out of and must switch consciousness every week and must be intravenously. There must also be daily injections of stabilizer fluid extracted from the original body to prevent the new one deteriorating, with no exception. Sue would be so beloved by Harvey in an audition to replace Elizabeth that she’d not only have her own aerobics program, but also headline a New Year’s Eve show. During one weekly cycle, she disregards the switch by delaying it, via extracting additional fluid. This causes Elizabeth’s right hand to rapidly age and when he reports this to the supplier, he confirms the damages are irreversible to those who disobey the rules. She would try to put herself out there when trying to go out with an old school friend named Fred, but would ultimately leave him hanging when feeling so insecure that she can’t match Sue’s beauty. This would lead to both halves choosing to separating themselves as individuals when Sue continues to disregard the schedule and Elizabeth responds by binge eating. The more successful that Sue gets though, the more she’d stockpile and refuse to switch back. Three months go by and on the day of the New Years show, Sue has ran out of stabilizer fluid. She calls the supplier for more who only responds with the solution to switch back to replenish. When that happens, Elizabeth has now transformed to an elderly hunchback as a result of the stockpile. Not wanting to age any further, she orders a serum to terminate her. She hesitates on fully injecting her with it though, as she still craves that admiration Sue has gotten. This leads to her resuscitating her back to life. When she wakes up, she spots the termination serum and brutally kills her predecessor before heading to the show. When she gets there, her body starts deteriorating. Panicking, she takes a leftover serum that is meant for single usage, which turns out to be a mutated body of herself & Elizabeth. Credited as ‘Monstro Elisasue’, the hybrid wears a poster of Elizabeth’s face and walks back to the studio before it falls off. Her appearance leaves Harvey and the audience in shock that an audience member responds by decapitating her. As her head grows back, her arm breaks and unintentionally drenches everyone in her blood. As she leaves, her body collapses into viscera and the film ends with her head crawling to Elizabeth’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star before melting the next day. 


THOUGHTS


It’s honestly quite hard to imagine that body horror can still hang when technology has changed for the industry significantly. If Terrifier and Saw has proven anything though, the genre is alive and well when it comes to expressing sheer brutality. Writer/Director Coraline Fargeat succeeds in using this genre to an advantage in expressing the ongoing problem that is age-ism. It doesn’t just apply in the entertainment industry, but its very common in such a setting because it is so easy to move on from talented people when they surpass the prime of their work and the common reason goes to age. The beauty standards put on people, especially women as depicted here, is unfair because no one’s worth should be defined by that. The cinematography by Benjamin Kračun is nonstop unsettling as it puts on the emphasis that good things don’t last forever and the desperation to keep it leads to severe consequences. That is the paradox you pick up on when following the dynamic of Elizabeth & Sue who fail to respect any kind of rules or even themselves because they’re so desperate to be something they don’t need to be. Demi Moore was an excellent choice as Elizabeth because she’s someone clinging on to the past and doesn’t want to bare being forgotten. She spends the whole time trying to impress selfish pigs the way Dennis Quaid showed off Harvey, who is so predatory based on how he stares at women (or eating shrimp so slobbishly), when she should take notice on guys like Fred, who Edward Hamilton Clark proved to be a decent fellow that didn’t have any severe expectations. Her actions are based off of her insecurity, thus desperately being irrational in her idea to start over as if she never aged. She’s so compulsive to the point she loses her motive once she loses what she wants to keep. She thought Sue would be the solution, but only discovered her to be her downfall. Why? Margaret Qualley proved her to be her own worst enemy as she lets her entitlement create her narcissism to the point she disregarded cautiousness, not caring what would happen. The more she took, the sooner her time would be up and be her own damnation. You already know the makeup was incredible in making Elizabeth look like a wicked witch, but the icing on the cake really goes to Monstro Elisasue who shook me to the core as the embodiment of what happens of what happens when you wait so long to take care of yourself and expect respect. Had either side had better appreciation and respect for themselves, this monstrosity would have been prevented for sure. But now, they let their downfall define them both and not even that could be undone. In conclusion, The Substance is 2024’s best horror movie overall for being so self aware that everything we’ve witnessed feels possible, earning the Best Picture nominee in the process. If you still love body horror, see this now.