THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

Studio:   Mubi
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Writer:   Coralie Fargeat
Producer: Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner
Stars:    Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

Review Score:

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Summary:

An aging celebrity undergoes shocking transformations when she injects a mysterious substance that creates a younger alter ego.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After filming an episode of her fitness show "Sparkle Your Life," aging celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle overhears insensitive producer Harvey demanding she be replaced with someone younger and more attractive. Following a lunch with Harvey where he condescendingly dismisses her from her show, Elisabeth becomes distracted by workmen tearing down a billboard of her face, which causes a violent car crash.

At the hospital, a young male nurse with a strange mark on his arm examines Elisabeth's spine and cryptically says, "You're a good candidate." Upon leaving, Elisabeth finds a flash drive labeled with a phone number and the words "The Substance" in her coat pocket along with a handwritten message that says, "It changed my life." Elisabeth then has a chance run-in with Fred, a nebbish she went to high school with, who sincerely flatters Elisabeth and gives her his phone number.

Back at her apartment, Elisabeth puts the flash drive in her TV. A video describes The Substance as an injection that unlocks your DNA for a cellular division that will create a younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of yourself. Cryptic details explain the user is "The Matrix," and "The Other Self" is not a separate person, but rather, both beings "are one."

Elisabeth calls the phone number to order The Substance. A breathy voice merely gives her the address 35 North Byron Alley and hangs up. After receiving a keycard with the number 503 in the mail, Elisabeth visits the deserted address and unlocks a box containing a package with her number on it.

Elisabeth reviews the package's contents back at home. A pouch labelled "Activator" contains tools for stitching a scar, a syringe, and a glowing liquid with the label "Single Use - Discard After Use." A "Stabilizer" pouch for the "Other Self" contains a spinal tap and empty syringe barrels. The box also contains medical tubing and pouches of viscous "food" to be intravenously administered to the matrix and other self during each being's seven days of unconsciousness. Instructions stipulate that activation only occurs once, stabilizer must be taken every day, and the two beings must switch places every seven days without exception.

Elisabeth injects the activator. Following painful writhing on her bathroom floor, Elisabeth falls unconscious as a younger woman who chooses the name Sue emerges from a large tear in Elisabeth's back. Sue sews up Elisabeth's scar, sets up the intravenous food drip, and extracts seven days worth of stabilizer from Elisabeth's spine.

Sue auditions to be Elisabeth's replacement. Overwhelmed by her marketable beauty, Harvey casts Sue for a new fitness show called "Pump It Up" that thrusts Sue into superstardom.

Using regular refill deliveries, Elisabeth and Sue continue alternating their existences every seven days. Sue also builds a hidden room for storing the unconscious body.

Sue realizes her current duration is expiring when her nose begins bleeding after bringing a date home. Ignoring The Substance's strict instructions, Sue extracts additional stabilizer from Elisabeth to extend her time.

When Elisabeth regains her body, she sees one of her fingers has become gnarled from rapid aging. Elisabeth calls The Substance's phone number and is told "What has been used on one side is lost on the other side. There is no going back." Elisabeth attempts to blame Sue for the problem, but is reminded she and Sue are one. The voice then says, "Respect the balance and you won't have any more inconveniences" before hanging up.

After picking up another refill kit, Elisabeth stops at a diner. Having followed her, a disabled old man with a telltale mark on his arm calls out Elisabeth's distress. Elisabeth realizes the old man is also the young nurse who referred her to The Substance. The old man tries talking to Elisabeth about the loneliness their matrixes experience. Elisabeth leaves in fright when the man asks if her alter ego has started eating away at her yet.

Desperate to feel desirable, Elisabeth arranges a date with Fred. However, Elisabeth ultimately stands up Fred after repeated attempts at redoing her makeup leave her dissatisfied with her appearance.

Rattled by a nightmare where she pulls a chicken leg out of her navel, Sue calls The Substance to complain about Elisabeth's depressive binge eating, but she too is reminded they are one. Sue continues to be disgusted by Elisabeth's slovenly behavior while Elisabeth grows increasingly envious of Sue's beauty and fame. Elisabeth becomes additionally incensed when Sue openly disparages her in a TV interview.

Sue learns she has been given the coveted job of hosting a major New Year's Eve show. The bump in her popularity compels Sue to repeatedly extend the seven-day limit, which causes half of Elisabeth's body to wither into a hag-like appearance.

Sue decides to remain her persona permanently. For three months, Sue continues extracting stabilizer from Elisabeth's unconscious body to maintain her form. Prior to the New Year's Eve broadcast, Sue realizes Elisabeth is no longer producing fluid. The man on the phone explains the limit has been reached, and the only way to produce more stabilizer is to switch bodies again. Sue reluctantly returns their shared consciousness to Elisabeth, who mutates into a disfigured crone.

Elisabeth orders a termination kit from The Substance to put an end to the body switching. While injecting the termination fluid into Sue's body, Elisabeth changes her mind, pauses the injection, and resuscitates Sue. The interrupted procedure causes Sue to become conscious at the same time as Elisabeth. Realizing Elisabeth tried to kill her, Sue begins a violent fight that ends with Sue viciously beating Elisabeth to death.

As the New Year's Eve broadcast is about to begin, Sue coughs out several teeth. With her body gruesomely deteriorating, Sue decides to misuse the remaining activator to try creating an improved version of herself. The injection instead creates a horrible hybrid of Elisabeth and Sue in a grotesque body.

Despite her appearance, Sue dresses up, dons a makeshift Elisabeth mask torn out of a portrait, and takes the stage at the New Year's Eve show. When her mask falls off, the live audience erupts in horrified chaos. One panicking man decapitates Sue, which causes another monstrous mutation to occur as blood from her body erupts all over the crowd.

The mutant body escapes outside and bursts apart when it falls on the sidewalk. Elisabeth's face crawls to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Looking up at the stars, Elisabeth imagines being adored by fans as she melts into a puddle of goo. The next morning, a street sweeper wipes away what remains of Elisabeth's bloody mess.

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Review:

The first thing "The Substance" both wants and needs you to know is it does not take place in reality. Most movies that show a 555 phone number only do so when absolutely necessary, and only briefly, so as not to disturb an audience's immersion with a sore thumb reminder that they're watching a work of fiction. "The Substance" displays multiple 555 phone numbers prominently, repeatedly, and deliberately. It's one of several regular reminders that this movie's version of Hollywood is meant to have its artificiality magnified even more than the real city.

"The Substance" starts with workers installing a star for Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) on the Walk of Fame. The sidewalk doesn't look like any stretch of Hollywood Boulevard I've ever seen, but people outside of Los Angeles don't know that. They might, however, know Southern California doesn't experience traditional winters, so when snow falls on the star, everyone should be on the same page that we've entered a sideways satire where not everything should be taken literally.

From paparazzi flashbulbs at the unveiling to passersby muttering "Remember her?" and dropping a sloppy burger on the gold lettering, this single shot takes us through years of the sidewalk star's physical deterioration. Running for over two uninterrupted minutes, "The Substance" doesn't need half this much time to instill the obvious idea that Elisabeth's former superstar status has faded into the border of irrelevancy. This is only the first of several sequences extended for durations longer than the narrative requires. Such scenes don't drag. You don't feel slowness. Rather, you feel the film is feeding from an overfull plate, being symbolically excessive on purpose to reflect one of the movie's many themes.

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat borrows visual cues from classics including "The Shining," "Re-Animator," "Psycho," and "2001: A Space Odyssey" to augment imagery. But Fargeat writes the rest of the movie in a cinematic language all her own. Contrasts of color. Over-expressive characters wearing vapid faces to make them read like preprogrammed automatons. Everything amplifies Fargeat's announcement that once you press Play, you're in "The Substance's" fantastical world now.

In this place, Elisabeth's solution to regaining her diminished popularity involves a mysterious process simply called The Substance. Once again, Fargeat knows precisely what she's communicating by dressing Elisabeth in a bright yellow coat and designer sunglasses, only for her to brave a graffiti-filled alleyway to find what she's searching for. A busted metal door rises only a few feet off the ground, forcing Elisabeth to crouch in a moment indicative of how low she'll go, and how she's willing to risk anything in pursuit of the glamorous vanity she's been bred to see as integral to existence.

More painful than plastic surgery, The Substance gives Elisabeth an alter ego, Sue (Margaret Qualley), who rips right out of her back. A younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of Elisabeth, Sue replaces her as a more marketable commodity, which greatly pleases an insensitive producer not-so-subtly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid). The hitch is Elisabeth and Sue are one being, and only one of them can be conscious at a time. Every seven days, they must switch places, without exception. As her stardom grows, Sue ignores the inconvenience of that last stipulation, and her selfish breaking of the strict rules has increasingly grotesque consequences for Elisabeth's body.

Unbothered with fitting into a singular mold, "The Substance" becomes a dark fable about desire, self-destruction, and unachievable standards perverted by social constructs. When Harvey hires Sue for a new show, it's literally advertised as "New Show." It doesn't need a name. Eager masses will gobble up whatever canned meat gets dropped in their bowl. Even in small details like this, "The Substance" has a lot to say on the subjects of fame, attractiveness, and their roles in disposable entertainment. The movie speaks specifically to women, but not exclusively. More broadly, "The Substance" is about hating one's self, which has universal meaning unrelated to gender.

Even if the story doesn't speak to you, or if you're turned off by the tempo or tone, "The Substance" undeniably impresses as authentic auteur cinema. It's everything a movie can be: dramatic, funny, frightening, contemplative, timely and timeless. Strip down "The Substance" to its bare bones of body horror and you'll see some of the most stunning creature designs and astonishing makeup FX ever put onscreen. From the deceptive simplicity of Elisabeth's first gnarled finger to the final reveal of a mutant monstrosity, a steady stream of surrealistic sights swirls into a crashing crescendo of chaotic terror that Gordon, Yuzna, Nicotero, Jackson, and other splatter pioneers dreamed of, but it couldn't be so richly realized until Fargeat found the final destination on the path they paved.

I'm not sure if hyperbole hurts that preceding declaration, but "The Substance" is an unsettling A-list experience combined with beautiful B-movie aesthetics. Between the impressive stunts, creative shot designs, and effects that will have people flinching from needle punctures and fallen fingernails to torn-out teeth and a bonkers, blood-gushing finale, I repeatedly found my gaping mouth asking, how did anyone think to do this? Coralie Fargeat and "The Substance" showed me things I've never seen before alongside things I didn't even know a movie could do. There's nothing quite like "The Substance," so viewers would be wise to activate its insanity and enter a uniquely warped world of incredible weirdness.

Review Score: 85

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