<h1 class="left">There’s a scene halfway through ‘The Substance’ where Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is getting ready in her bathroom. Elisabeth looks into the mirror, dabs on her lipstick, and adds a final coat of setting powder. Wow, you think. Demi Moore looks so good! (is she really 61!). Then you think Demi/Elisabeth is going to go out and triumphantly love herself, despite her insecurities about ageing! But when she’s just about to leave, Elisabeth sees her younger, glassier, more erect alter ego on a billboard. She runs back into her bathroom and stares at the mirror again. She feels ugly, fat, and old. She slaps her face with more concealer. She mangles her red lipstick into a smeared smile. She rabidly pulls her eyelashes and her hair out. Elisabeth becomes a manic, violent, can’t-look/can’t-look-away car crash. She’s not a tear rolling down a cheek, or a take-that!-beauty-standards-woman; she’s an agonised, full-throated scream.</h1>
<h1 class="right">Another film might’ve rendered this scene with pathos, nostalgia, or quiet feminist insight into the emotional toll of ageing in Hollywood, a would-be Neverland. But this isn’t that film. This is better. ‘The Substance,’ streaming now on MUBI, is a self-aware jump scare hagsploitation body horror movie that hates itself as much as it hates you — ogling at it for some two and a half hours. ‘The Substance’ is a sore that festers with sepsis and pus because you keep picking at it. It takes what we all want to be – seen – and turns that desire into an ooze of putrefaction. It’s campy, gory, and sleazy.</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Directed by Coralie Fargeat, ‘The Substance’ is also, like the best French exports, intoxicating and messy. Nearly each frame contains references to other films, literature, and art. I saw in it Snow White, The Shining, Lady Macbeth, Lacan’s Mirror Stage, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Carrie, Cinderella, Black Swan, Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Vertigo, Jenna Maroney of 30 Rock, and about a million other things. But instead of collapsing under the weight of these references, ‘The Substance’ uses them to admit that it is not reinventing horror as a genre, nor revolutionising its themes of vanity, tech-dystopia, or Hollywood’s misogyny. ‘The Substance’ knows it is telling a very old and very simple story. That’s what makes it such good fun.</h1>
<h1 class="centre">The plot follows the actress Elisabeth Sparkle turning 50, and promptly getting kicked off her TV show. This first act is filmed in sets of primary colours and almost no dialogue. Everything can be gleaned from shots of surfaces and sagging bodies. Then, Elisabeth takes a new medical innovation (the titular ‘substance’) and births a new, hot, cellulite-free version of herself – Sue (the astonishing Margaret Qualley). Sue, like a rebooted Alexa, looks into the mirror with empty ecstasy and says the first dialogue in at least the past 10 minutes: “hello.” Fargeat films Sue like a commercial – she is Coke, H&M, romantic comedies, and OnlyFans. Her poreless skin and supple smiles haunt the screen like a fantasy, shimmering in exaggerated close-ups and a new soundtrack of synths.</h1>
<h1 class="right">‘The Substance’ hates how camera lenses have eroded women’s ability to see themselves without obfuscation. As revenge against this violence, the film implicates the viewer in the dirty business of objectification. It piles on image after image with a fluorescent lust for female bodies. Sue is depicted as elastic ass, giggles, and pink cocaine. She is all mouth, no words, and will do anything to stay in the light of fame. With our hands bloody, and eyes uncomfortably fixed on montages of her body, Fargeat doesn’t let you get away with blaming ‘the system’ or its male gaze. The film is designed for your discomfort.</h1>
<h1 class="right">In the third act, ‘The Substance’ devolves into a spectacle of heavy metal desperation, wherein perfect beauty is exposed as a mirage no woman can ever reach, not even with a strong enough injection. Both Sue and Elisabeth are now seen as freaks; beauty can only be enjoyed retrospectively. What Elisabeth got addicted to as Sue she may not have enjoyed when she was Sue’s age and just starting out. And only when Elisabeth is bald, hunched over and disfigured does she find the image of who she was at the start of the film beautiful.</h1>
<h1 class="left">Much criticism of ‘The Substance’ finds this commentary shallow, overdone, and riddled with plot holes. Details are left undeveloped, and every character is a caricature, a trope, a copy of a copy of a copy. The men are blubbering idiots and cartoonish devils (one is literally called ‘Harvey’ and another group is called ‘the shareholders’). The billboards are expressionistic and just say ‘new show’ and ‘tooth bright’ and ‘New Year’s Eve.’ The writing is filled with truisms that serve no dialogic purpose and add no verisimilitude except on the level of allegory. There are logical inconsistencies. How is the aged Elisabeth, portrayed as too weak to get off her couch, somehow able to fight the superhuman Sue? Who is the voice and mind behind The Substance? What year – hell, decade - is this film set in? Don’t know, don’t care. I’m not watching this film for its realism. The shallowness – style over Substance – is the whole point.</h1>
<h1 class="left">Look at the climate the film has released in: 11-year-olds are wearing retinol; and 45-year-olds are injecting their bodies with the blood of the young. People get Botox and fillers like they’re blowouts. The Ozempic shortage is harming actual people with diabetes, and Twitter’s response to ‘The Substance’ has largely been ‘I would also take the substance if I could look like Margaret Qualley every alternate week.’ Is the movie exhausting you? Beating a dead horse, painfully boring, and too long? That’s what beauty routines feel like. Youth is the one trend that will never get old. I’m not watching this film for the novelty of its ‘message'.</h1>
<h1 class="left">A study by The Economist showed that it was economically rational for women to try to be as thin as possible if they wanted to get ahead in the corporate world. Women also know that they should ‘love ourselves’ and ‘not care.’ They are not stupid. But even with degrees in gender studies and psychobabble therapy, I (23) spent about half the movie wondering if my ass would ever look like Margaret Qualley’s, and making mental notes to go visit a dermatologist about those sunspots.</h1>
<h1 class="centre">‘The Substance’ understands that validation, like fame, and like love, is a drug. Once you’ve felt its easy, visceral euphoria, you’ll do anything to stay high. And you’d do it even if the drug were ridiculous, self-destructive, impossible, exploitative, and cruel, like much-anti-ageing treatment is.</h1>
<h1 class="centre">By the end of the film, Demi Moore is wonderfully bitter, bitchy and guttural in what is clearly a career-highlight meta-performance. Her sneering rage is so over-the-top that I’m laughing and screaming. ‘The Substance’ is a blood-soaked, lipstick-gashing, mass-murderous, cultural catharsis scream.</h1>
<h1 class="full">There’s a scene halfway through ‘The Substance’ where Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is getting ready in her bathroom. Elisabeth looks into the mirror, dabs on her lipstick, and adds a final coat of setting powder. Wow, you think. Demi Moore looks so good! (is she really 61!). Then you think Demi/Elisabeth is going to go out and triumphantly love herself, despite her insecurities about ageing! But when she’s just about to leave, Elisabeth sees her younger, glassier, more erect alter ego on a billboard. She runs back into her bathroom and stares at the mirror again. She feels ugly, fat, and old. She slaps her face with more concealer. She mangles her red lipstick into a smeared smile. She rabidly pulls her eyelashes and her hair out. Elisabeth becomes a manic, violent, can’t-look/can’t-look-away car crash. She’s not a tear rolling down a cheek, or a take-that!-beauty-standards-woman; she’s an agonised, full-throated scream.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Another film might’ve rendered this scene with pathos, nostalgia, or quiet feminist insight into the emotional toll of ageing in Hollywood, a would-be Neverland. But this isn’t that film. This is better. ‘The Substance,’ streaming now on MUBI, is a self-aware jump scare hagsploitation body horror movie that hates itself as much as it hates you — ogling at it for some two and a half hours. ‘The Substance’ is a sore that festers with sepsis and pus because you keep picking at it. It takes what we all want to be – seen – and turns that desire into an ooze of putrefaction. It’s campy, gory, and sleazy.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Directed by Coralie Fargeat, ‘The Substance’ is also, like the best French exports, intoxicating and messy. Nearly each frame contains references to other films, literature, and art. I saw in it Snow White, The Shining, Lady Macbeth, Lacan’s Mirror Stage, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Carrie, Cinderella, Black Swan, Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Vertigo, Jenna Maroney of 30 Rock, and about a million other things. But instead of collapsing under the weight of these references, ‘The Substance’ uses them to admit that it is not reinventing horror as a genre, nor revolutionising its themes of vanity, tech-dystopia, or Hollywood’s misogyny. ‘The Substance’ knows it is telling a very old and very simple story. That’s what makes it such good fun.</h1>
<h1 class="full">The plot follows the actress Elisabeth Sparkle turning 50, and promptly getting kicked off her TV show. This first act is filmed in sets of primary colours and almost no dialogue. Everything can be gleaned from shots of surfaces and sagging bodies. Then, Elisabeth takes a new medical innovation (the titular ‘substance’) and births a new, hot, cellulite-free version of herself – Sue (the astonishing Margaret Qualley). Sue, like a rebooted Alexa, looks into the mirror with empty ecstasy and says the first dialogue in at least the past 10 minutes: “hello.” Fargeat films Sue like a commercial – she is Coke, H&M, romantic comedies, and OnlyFans. Her poreless skin and supple smiles haunt the screen like a fantasy, shimmering in exaggerated close-ups and a new soundtrack of synths.</h1>
<h1 class="full">‘The Substance’ hates how camera lenses have eroded women’s ability to see themselves without obfuscation. As revenge against this violence, the film implicates the viewer in the dirty business of objectification. It piles on image after image with a fluorescent lust for female bodies. Sue is depicted as elastic ass, giggles, and pink cocaine. She is all mouth, no words, and will do anything to stay in the light of fame. With our hands bloody, and eyes uncomfortably fixed on montages of her body, Fargeat doesn’t let you get away with blaming ‘the system’ or its male gaze. The film is designed for your discomfort.</h1>
<h1 class="full">In the third act, ‘The Substance’ devolves into a spectacle of heavy metal desperation, wherein perfect beauty is exposed as a mirage no woman can ever reach, not even with a strong enough injection. Both Sue and Elisabeth are now seen as freaks; beauty can only be enjoyed retrospectively. What Elisabeth got addicted to as Sue she may not have enjoyed when she was Sue’s age and just starting out. And only when Elisabeth is bald, hunched over and disfigured does she find the image of who she was at the start of the film beautiful.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Much criticism of ‘The Substance’ finds this commentary shallow, overdone, and riddled with plot holes. Details are left undeveloped, and every character is a caricature, a trope, a copy of a copy of a copy. The men are blubbering idiots and cartoonish devils (one is literally called ‘Harvey’ and another group is called ‘the shareholders’). The billboards are expressionistic and just say ‘new show’ and ‘tooth bright’ and ‘New Year’s Eve.’ The writing is filled with truisms that serve no dialogic purpose and add no verisimilitude except on the level of allegory. There are logical inconsistencies. How is the aged Elisabeth, portrayed as too weak to get off her couch, somehow able to fight the superhuman Sue? Who is the voice and mind behind The Substance? What year – hell, decade - is this film set in? Don’t know, don’t care. I’m not watching this film for its realism. The shallowness – style over Substance – is the whole point.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Look at the climate the film has released in: 11-year-olds are wearing retinol; and 45-year-olds are injecting their bodies with the blood of the young. People get Botox and fillers like they’re blowouts. The Ozempic shortage is harming actual people with diabetes, and Twitter’s response to ‘The Substance’ has largely been ‘I would also take the substance if I could look like Margaret Qualley every alternate week.’ Is the movie exhausting you? Beating a dead horse, painfully boring, and too long? That’s what beauty routines feel like. Youth is the one trend that will never get old. I’m not watching this film for the novelty of its ‘message'.</h1>
<h1 class="full">A study by The Economist showed that it was economically rational for women to try to be as thin as possible if they wanted to get ahead in the corporate world. Women also know that they should ‘love ourselves’ and ‘not care.’ They are not stupid. But even with degrees in gender studies and psychobabble therapy, I (23) spent about half the movie wondering if my ass would ever look like Margaret Qualley’s, and making mental notes to go visit a dermatologist about those sunspots.</h1>
<h1 class="full">‘The Substance’ understands that validation, like fame, and like love, is a drug. Once you’ve felt its easy, visceral euphoria, you’ll do anything to stay high. And you’d do it even if the drug were ridiculous, self-destructive, impossible, exploitative, and cruel, like much-anti-ageing treatment is.</h1>
<h1 class="full">By the end of the film, Demi Moore is wonderfully bitter, bitchy and guttural in what is clearly a career-highlight meta-performance. Her sneering rage is so over-the-top that I’m laughing and screaming. ‘The Substance’ is a blood-soaked, lipstick-gashing, mass-murderous, cultural catharsis scream.</h1>