The Substance – Movie Review and Summary (2024)

Feeling smothered by impossible beauty standards and society's fixation on youth is nothing new. But Coralie Fargeat's The Substance comes in the wake of the Ozempic era, when a quick injection promises weight loss that seemed impossible without surgery just a few years ago. In my social media feed, the ads offer the chance to “feel like yourself again” and try it cheaply and see fast results. Tempting, isn't it? The parallels between GLP-1 slimming drugs and the aforementioned substance from the film end there. But Fargeat, who wrote and directed the film, turns the quest for a “fountain of youth” into a blood- and neon-soaked spectacle.

As an actress, Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) once wowed audiences, but like her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she's seen better days. She loses her job leading a fitness class for a daytime TV show when a grotesque manager named Harvey (Dennis Quaid) cancels her program to make room for all the “youngsters.” Heartbroken at being unceremoniously dumped because of her age, Elizabeth learns of a mysterious product called The Substance that creates a younger version of herself, allowing her to continue working in the youth-obsessed entertainment industry. Like the monsters in Gremlins, however, The Substance comes with a very specific set of rules: She can only activate her younger self once, and she and her sprightly alter ego must shut down every seven days, without exception. Supposedly they share the same consciousness, but as Elizabeth and her younger self, Sue (Margaret Qualley), continue with The Substance, they learn about the unspoken side effects of pursuing youth at any cost.

Fargeat feels compassion for Elizabeth and Sue's fate, as one might feel for Frankenstein and the monster he creates. What begins as an experiment for a fresh start quickly twists with unintended consequences. In The Substance, Fargeat also references David Cronenberg's penchant for body horror in films like The Brood, where a mad scientist experiments on a pregnant woman with horrific results; Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, which also features a neon green goo reminiscent of The Substance; James Whale's The Invisible Man, about a medical miracle gone wrong; and Brian De Palma's Carrie, which uses copious amounts of blood and destruction to depict a girl's pain. Perhaps the use of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo theme seems overly intrusive, but it thematically fits the story and its obsessive mood.

As with her no-frills film debut, Revenge, Fargeat writes a tight script that focuses on very few characters. She pairs her talented on-screen collaborators with an equally impressive team behind the camera, including cinematographer Benjamin Kracun, who transforms Revenge's garish pink and blue color scheme into a bold and bright palette befitting Beverly Hills. Costumes are by Emmanuelle Youchnovski, who uses even bolder colors and materials to shape each character's personality, and composer Raffertie, whose catchy and driving beats make the film feel like it's speeding past traffic on the 405.

While “The Substance” uses horror elements to criticize the entertainment business and the multibillion-dollar industry that capitalizes on people’s quest for the fountain of youth, it does so with enough panache that it’s still fun. In caricaturing Harvey, who is so cartoonishly loud and awful in every scene, Fargeat and Kracun often switch to a fisheye lens or awkward close-ups to make him seem even more grotesque and hypocritical for cutting out Elizabeth’s show. The stylized layouts of production designer Stanislas Reydellet and his team also play with the film’s heightened reality, as seen in the television studio, where an overlong hallway is bathed in the orange colors of “The Shining” carpet, and in the pharmaceutical depot Elizabeth visits, which seems straight out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

As Sue, Qualley is transformed into the bombshell next door with an idealized hot body who has a penchant for neon workout clothes, lip gloss, big earrings, and boys. Unlike Elizabeth's fitness show, Sue's workout videos zoom in on her body parts because those are the parts her executives like Harvey fetishize and sell to audiences, reinforcing the adoration of youth and their gravity-defying skin. As far as mustache-twirling villains go, Quaid may not have a beard, but he does have a maniacal laugh and a heartless personality to match Harvey's flashy suits. He seems to have a blast behaving badly as the personification of the cruelty women experience in the industry. It's hands down Quaid's best acting performance in recent memory, and it's not even the best in the film.

The Substance works so well because Moore portrays a woman struggling with self-loathing, society's treatment of her, and a newfound dependence on a miracle drug. In one particularly heartbreaking scene, Elizabeth stands in front of a mirror, fussing over the final details of her makeup and outfit. Although she looks as glamorous as one could wish, her face betrays a look of dissatisfaction as she sees more flaws than beauty before her. It's a ritual many of us may know all too well: We fuss over accessories and lip color in the hopes of looking fashionable, carefully adding or removing layers of clothing and jewelry in the hope of feeling comfortable in our own skin. Elizabeth is so dissatisfied with her image that she aggressively wipes the dark shade of lipstick across her face and pulls the false eyelashes from her lids. She can't see her own beauty, and that will turn her life upside down. The film may feel like a warning to our times, but the horrors at the heart of The Substance have been with us for many years, and the problems the film uncovers go far beyond the surface.

This review was written at the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film opens on September 20th.