Review of the movie The Substance. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in the most disgusting masterpiece of the year

Director Coralie Fargeat doesn’t release new works very often, but each of them deserves special attention. This became clear from her debut feature film Revenge in 2017, which garnered a lot of good reviews from ordinary viewers and critics. Interestingly, Farja wrote and directed the script herself, meaning she had full creative control. Perhaps this is what made the film so sensitive and almost monumental in its story.

The Substance, the director’s new work, goes even further. It is at the same time an incredibly aesthetic and chillingly disgusting movie in which almost everything is perfect. And it will definitely evoke emotions and thoughts that you won’t be able to get rid of easily.

Actress Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) lives a life that many people can only dream of. She has her own star on the Walk of Fame, a steady job as a fitness show host, a luxurious apartment, and the love of her audience. However, when she turned 50, the harsh reality set in. The show’s director, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), believes that Elizabeth has become too old to satisfy the audience with her appearance, so he plans to fire her and find a younger replacement. The woman is shocked by this development, but accidentally learns about a mysterious substance that allows you to create an identical clone from human cells, a perfect younger version. Elizabeth agrees to participate in the Substance program, and this is how her clone Sue is created. The two women share one consciousness because the protagonist has to constantly change bodies: one week she lives as young Sue, the next as mature Elizabeth. But the precarious balance begins to crumble when Sue’s life gradually becomes the main one. And this leads to terrible and irreparable consequences.

The film attracts attention already at the level of trailers, posters and other promotional materials. They all stand out and attract attention. When authors are not afraid to put several different scenes on the poster at once, it is usually a good sign, because it indicates the high quality of the directing and the overall content of the film.

And so it turned out: The Substance looks great. The film crew emphasizes symmetry in the frame, color contrast, and sets that combine everyday life with something from other worlds. There are few films as beautiful as this one. However, Fargeat does not turn everything into a beautiful image for the sake of a beautiful image, not at all. Even the neatness of the shooting has a separate meaning, which further reveals the main ideas of the story.

For every beautiful moment in The Substance, there is something disgusting, because it is also one of the best body horrors of recent years. The beauty and disgust of human bodies in the film always go hand in hand, and the camera does not spare the viewers and demonstrates flaws and painful moments without any restrictions. Very often, while watching, you want to close your eyes or squeeze into a chair. Right during the screening, people were actively and loudly shouting, and some of them could not stand it and left the cinema. Substance is a physically demanding movie, so be prepared for that.

However, there is a belief that beauty is always somewhere close to deformity, that these two concepts are inextricably linked and cannot exist without each other. Truly beautiful moments can only be seen against the backdrop of something truly ugly. But some people find it easier to turn a blind eye or pursue conventional standards of beauty, even if they don’t resonate with their inner worldview. The pressure of society is too high even in everyday life, let alone for various public figures. The Substance takes these complex thoughts and presents them in such a sophisticated and competent way that you are a little surprised at how harmoniously everything turned out.

Because some of the elements of the film are not new at all, on the contrary. Stories about clones, the pursuit of beauty, the cruelty of show business, and personality crises are coming out all the time. And after Substance, they will definitely continue to come out. If we try to identify the main sources of inspiration, it would be Requiem for a Dream, The Portrait of Dorian Gray and David Cronenberg’s filmography. Fargeat did not try to create something completely from scratch. But the way she rethought and presented everything deserves a standing ovation.

Even Demi Moore’s acting talents in the context of The Substance reveal themselves to the audience from a new angle, even reaching a meta-narrative level. After all, the story of the fictional actress Elizabeth Sparkle resonates strongly with the real state of affairs in Moore’s life. Perhaps this resonance allowed her to play perhaps the best role of her life. Kweli is also at her best in Substance, but the script puts her in a somewhat stereotypical role, allowing her to reveal herself fully only towards the end.

But the ending itself is the only, but still noticeable, disadvantage of the film. The last scenes don’t add any new meanings, they just build on the ideas that the movie has already expressed in a more creative way before. Instead, in the last moments, The Substance is all about shock for shock’s sake, body horror without any intellectual load. Fans of this grotesque subgenre may even like it, but in general, the shift in emphasis spoils the overall experience, softening the tension that the film had been building up perfectly before.

If it weren’t for the ending, Substance could easily have won the title of best film of the year. It is full of interesting visual metaphors and unique aesthetics. The script gives only the minimum necessary information, leaving a lot of room for your own interpretations. And this is critically important for horror, which, unfortunately, many directors forget. The Substance transforms even the script foundation about clones into a subject of discussion. After all, according to the concept, both the human-matrix, as the originals are called in The Substance, and the clone are actually one thing, with one consciousness. However, the events of the movie will repeatedly make us think about this statement.

Substance evokes a frantic whirlwind of thoughts that are not hindered by any sense of disgust. You admire individual frames and scenes despite your general disgust, and analyze what you see even with all the attempts of the authors to distract your attention with grotesqueness and cruelty. Playing on contrasts makes any work of art much better. And The Substance is a reference play on contrasts in everything.