“The Substance”

Madelyn Valento

October is undoubtedly the perfect time to sit down to watch a spooky movie. However, with hundreds of films to choose from, some obnoxiously cheesy and others brutally grotesque (somehow, this film was both), pressing play can be a risk that doesn’t always result in a reward. 

“The Substance” is a satirical body horror film about Elizabeth (Demi Moore), a fading television star. When a new treatment, The Substance, offers her a chance to be young and successful again, she takes it. Enter Sue (Margaret Qualley), born—diverged?—from Elizabeth’s body. The catch? Only one of them can be up and walking around at a time: one week on, one week off. And they must follow the steps of taking The Substance, which include a consistent ‘feeding’ of their other unconscious self, and daily injections of a stabilizer—Elizabeth’s spinal fluid—to maintain the switch. 

Though it’s meant to be Elizabeth’s consciousness in Sue’s body, Sue starts to develop a mind of her own, and a battle of greed and jealousy ensues. This film, above all else, aims to make viewers uncomfortable with a series of wide angle shots, static shots, and unpleasant close-ups, to a point where you’d think director Coralie Fargeat was discovering them for the first time. Besides making you uncomfortable, I’m not sure this film does much else. It attempts to make a statement on aging: you should allow this natural process to happen, don’t mess with it. Instead, I feel like the film depicted aging not as a spectrum, but one or the other. It’s young or old, good or bad, beautiful or useless, which culminates in an ending too dependent on the shock factor of a woman’s naked body and how many ways it can be distorted and destroyed.