The Substance (2024)
September 24, 2024 10:24 AM - Subscribe

A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

"With “The Substance,” Fargeat, who helmed the excellent, brutal, bubble-gum-colored thrillride that was “Revenge,” has crafted an overstuffed, bonkers, blood-soaked saga about women and the hell they're put through all in the name of modern beauty standards. Fargeat's script is about as unsubtle as they come — every scene is loaded with unmistakable, obvious, impossible-to-miss meaning. And yet, this isn't a hindrance to the film. If anything, it just makes the movie all the more endearing. It's equal parts horrific and hilarious."—Chris Evangelista for SlashFilm

In theaters in the US now.
posted by bcwinters (17 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't recommend this movie for everyone, but for absolute body-horror freakazoids like me it's required viewing. Maybe a little longer than it needed to be, but I appreciate the time taken to really flesh out the psychological dimensions of the transformations and the way it communicates so much of the exposition through pure visuals rather than more conventional talking-head scenes. The last 30 minutes is one of the most absolutely gonzo things I've ever seen in a wide-release horror movie, be prepared going in.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:36 AM on September 24 [2 favorites]


That was entirely a thing.

I'm deeply enamoured of the weirdly assembled world where a (one assumes) broadcast TV morning fitness show is the key to absolute fame, and doing "The New Year's Eve" show with boobs-out showgirls is the apex of stardom.

Too much here to unpack, but I do have to say that without any kind of memory transference or experience-sharing, I don't really see the appeal of The Substance? I mean, if I could make a younger, fitter version of me that I can live vicariously through on alternating weeks, sure, maybe. But just cutting my life in half to generate effectively a perfect stranger having fun while I lie on a tile floor? Meh. What's the benefit to Elisabeth to have 'Sue' taking half her life and not even getting to know what happens with 'Sue'?

A lot of the time I think the point was made and then it just kept getting hammered in. I did really enjoy the descent into Full GWAR at the end.
posted by Shepherd at 5:28 PM on September 24 [3 favorites]


That was amazingly fucked up. I think I might have seen a lot of either Moore or Qualley than I anticipated. (Cue Patrick Stewart in Extras: "It's too late. I've seen EVERYTHING.")

Oh, those sound designers and foley artists must have had a blast!
posted by Kitteh at 6:10 PM on September 24 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I had to cover my eyes during some scenes, but the sounds were still very...evocative. The end was great - at first, it seemed like too much, but then quickly became hilarious (the earrings!) and I was fully onboard.
posted by amarynth at 7:30 AM on September 25 [2 favorites]


As an early 50-something woman with a fondness for all things Joe Bob Briggs, this movie feels genetically designed for me. I'd say the recipe for putting this together looks something like:

- one dash Aerobicise videos circa 1982 (my mom had these on Laserdisc!)
- a b-roll from Basket Case
- a smidge of Requiem for a Dream
- a sly nod to Re-Animator

Not to mention a few others, like Death Becomes Her. Superb casting for Dennis Quaid's character, by the way -- utterly repellent, and very familiar.

Saw this with a similar-aged friend, and we both agree that as absurd as the premise sounds, we've both done stupid things to try and be (insert whatever it is you hate about yourself and wish you could easily fix with a pill or procedure here).

It makes a lot of sense to me that you can't just reverse the aging process. Besides the fact we've already seen that story done to death, everyone would realize it was just a younger-looking Elisabeth. And we have that technology now, to some degree (just look at the recent pics of Christina Aguilera to see what I'm talking about). The right cosmetic procedures can easily shave 25 years off your face and body, if done right.

But to TRULY recapture all the potential of your original youth? The capriciousness, the sense of immortality, the self-destructive abandon of it all? Yeah, for that you'll need a whole new vehicle to operate in, so I get why the film took this angle. It shows exactly how deeply ingrained misogyny can destroy a woman's sense of self-worth.

All that wealth, prestige, success... and she'd throw it all away in a heartbeat just to be young again.

The memory/consciousness transference issue is a huge problem, but then again, who would inject The Substance if it was made perfectly clear you don't get to simply rent the new body with your old brain and personality ensconced inside?

The thing that makes a good Monkey's Paw/Faustian Bargain story is that you're given exactly what you wished for, along with the unintended consequences. Nobody is better off after using the Monkey's Paw, no matter how tempting the offer might be.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:57 AM on September 25 [6 favorites]


I made the dumb joke of "Women would rather take a black market subtance to technically be young again than go to therapy" afterwards.

BUT -- I get it. If you're someone whose life has been based on your looks--all your money and fame and etc--and then to be dumped because of your age (and lbr, Elisabeth still looked damn good, imo), yeah that would fucking sting. I think of all the Hollywood beauties past and present who were thrown aside once they stopped being young and fuckable. And while this movie can really overegg that particuar pudding, it doesn't make it any less true.
posted by Kitteh at 9:04 AM on September 25


I only saw like 70% of this movie with my eyes because I can't do gore or violence or their intersection. I was left more enthused about this movie in concept than in execution. Like if you said "Cronenberg goes Lynch goes 'Carrie'," I think on paper that sounds pretty good. But there was a period where the entire plot of this movie was "lady does subcutaneous injections on her proxy self and vice versa over and over again." And then there was the back third which was . . . insane and not of particular value. The movie deliberately evokes a loneliness--there aren't really any characters in this movie except for Demi Moore's character, and she has no interlocutors or anything. That was effective in making the movie feel pretty sparse, but at the expense, maybe, of having an actual plot?
posted by kensington314 at 2:42 PM on September 25 [3 favorites]


I just went and read an article that gives away the plot and...hoo, boy. I won't be watching this, because of my own preferences, but it sounds like one hell of a statement movie.

My own kids are entering their 20s, and I briefly missed that time...before I remembered some of the Dumb Shit I had done and said at that age, and shook off the feeling for good. :7) But that's easy for me to say, since I am a man and also kind of a goofy-looking one: I had nothing to lose, and not far to fall.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:52 AM on September 27


I saw this over the weekend with grumpybearbride and we both came out on the "meh" side. The core concept is extremely compelling, but the execution felt hollow. Elisa has no friends of family or apparently interests of any kind. She merely seems vain - not to mention entirely incurious with regards to the options available to her once she is let go from her workout show. Surely she has amassed an enormous amount of social capital, connections, money and goodwill that she could leverage for her life's next act? Surely someone of her stature and accomplishment has plans and drive and cunning? But, no, she just wants to be young again.

Which, OK, that's what this movie is about, but nothing interesting is done. Here are the rules, which of course will all be broken in predictable ways. There was a moment - when both Elisa and Sue were awake at the same time - that I felt it might go somewhere interesting. But, no, they just fight. And, yeah, Monstrous Elisasue is a pretty good Cronenberg-esque monstrosity, and I did dig the printout of Elisa's face that was pasted to ME's head - strong Thankskilling vibes - but I really wanted this monstrosity to enact some violence and retribution rather than just spewing blood and then exploding.

Also, it felt like the approach to the score was "what if that ZZOOOOOOOOOP sound that is in every trailer was just, like, the whole score?"

Anyway, I can see how people like it from a pure body horror perspective, and of course not everything has to be subtle with well-developed characters, but I wanted more from this film than just "OLD IS SCARY, MEN ARE HORRIBLE, LET'S GET NEKKID AND MELTY."

As an aside, I read one review which was gushing over the film that included the line "who among us knows what is really in our injectables?" and, well, WTF.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:39 AM on October 2 [1 favorite]


But just cutting my life in half to generate effectively a perfect stranger The voice on the phone keeps emphasizing they are one. She isn't a stranger. They are the same person only one is younger. That's the sole difference. That they see themselves as different people, I took, as symbolic of the alienation and self-hatred women have towards themselves for the very human act of aging. As a young woman she internalized those views and she still holds them even though she is aging, which is what both drives towards the substance and ultimately why she ends up doomed to become a breast vomiting blood geyser.

As a fan of body horror, I really love most of the movie.

I will say this, we need to bring intermissions back now that movies longer than 2 hours are becoming more common. Give people a 10 minute break to go the bathroom and/or get snacks.
posted by miss-lapin at 1:15 PM on October 5 [5 favorites]


This was redeemed for me by the swing towards outright camp at the end. Frankly it could have also started off stronger without relying on oh-so-dramatic snowfall in a timelapse set in Hollywood, though. (Maybe those statements sound contradictory.)

I read the TVTropes article and found myself annoyed at the assumption in a lot of examples that Sue/Elisabeth is, from her own subjective perspective, one person who sometimes wakes up in an older or younger body (until the attempted termination, of course). To me it ultimately seemed clear that Sue started as a mental copy of Elisabeth with all her memories, etc., but a distinct copy, mentally a different person but bound to Elisabeth-Prime by the rules of the substance, and the voice's urging that "[they] are one" was more true as a reminder of how they are bound to each other than a literal explication of how their consciousnesses worked. I mean, Sue isn't acting like she's stealing time/age from herself next week, but more like Elisabeth is some kind of other party she can exploit (even if it is "herself" from up to the injection), and they don't know what the other is doing -- Elisabeth doesn't know what Sue's answers will be in the interview, Sue doesn't know Elisabeth is contemplating "termination" (and SubstanceCo's repeated insistence of one-ness also works to reframe this as, somehow, not a murder), each is surprised by the other's weird messes, etc. But then again, the switches are filmed as if each is awaking from a nightmare of the other's memories, so there seems to be some connection intended. Could their separation be intended to be read as some sort of repression, and "healthy" substance use is, subjectively, one person experiencing a weekly switch? That really doesn't make sense to me within the film's logic but it's plausible as an intended way of writing the characters. Anyway, the point is, I think sometimes TVTropes articles get heavily swayed by one editor's idiosyncratic takes.

Speaking of the film's less-than-rigorous relationship with biological plausibility: it would have been a very different take on the film's themes, but I do find myself wishing that between the activation injection and Sue "hatching" was a week or three of Elisabeth just binge-eating like mad, because where does all that biomass come from?!? I'm missing the point, yes, but it's hard to ignore in these kinds of stories -- I'm half-convinced it's the real reason actual biologist Peter Watts wrote "The Things", and the alien viewpoint was added in later.

And as long as I'm shotgunning counterfactuals: when the Elisabeth-face started to break free at the very end, part of me hoped it was all about to end with a messy but safely intact Demi Moore climbing out, a man approaching her and saying in the substance's phone voice "Now, Elisabeth, have you learned your lesson?", and her saying "Gee whiz, mister, I sure have! From now on I'll appreciate what I already have!", then the rest of the New Year's cast join them to laugh about it all on the sidewalk as the monster's blood seeps into the sewers. Freeze frame, roll credits. Much like I should probably do on this comment.
posted by dick dale the vampire at 9:40 PM on October 14 [2 favorites]


I also entertained the possibility of original-formula Demi Moore emerging from the wreckage of Monstrous Elisasue, and I think Fargeat sort of implies that as a possibility by having a fairly intact and coherent Elisabeth face on said monster's back.

I really enjoyed this, though I'm not sure it got the ending right. The things that struck me most were the plethora of direct references to other films, especially Kubrick (we got the carpet from The Shining, plus the Star Child tunnel from 2001, and of course Also sprach Zarathustra in case you missed the point earlier, and I'm pretty sure there's a bit of Clockwork Orange in there though I didn't exactly pinpoint it), plus the obvious Cronenberg body-horror bits, a dash of Lost Highway era David Lynch and, delightfully, the monster effects at the end which seemed straight out of the Stuart Gordon / Brian Yuzna From Beyond / Society playbooks. Not that I'm trying to reduce the film to its references - these seemed like very deliberate and intentional tips of the hat to me.

I wish the movie had managed to say something more about the relationship between Elisabeth and Sue besides "one must destroy the other and their synthesis could only be a monstrosity." I did enjoy the tables turning from Elisabeth's horror at Sue leaving the apartment a drunken mess to Sue being aghast at the wreckage of Elisabeth's spontaneous French cooking phase and I wish they had a little bit more of that back-and-forth effect on one another.
posted by whir at 10:43 PM on October 17 [1 favorite]


The Substance stars, director explain the film’s beautifully gruesome ending:
Fargeat explains the scene as "finally, it’s the moment where she’s free from her human body and appearance" for the first time since the film began, meaning she's finally free from its trappings, both physically and emotionally. She is no longer tethered by a desire to critique her own body or indulge in feeling like her worth is tied to her star status. She takes the stage because she wants it, and because it's hers — not as an obligation to those who hired her.

"It’s the first moment where she’s able to love herself. It’s the moment she sees herself and it’s not disgust, but in fact it’s as if she’s seeing her true self for the first time," Fargeat continues. "Finally, she doesn’t have to care what she looks like, she doesn’t have to care what people are going to think. For the first time, there’s self-indulgence, tenderness. It’s the first time she looks at herself in the mirror and doesn’t criticize herself. She decides, okay, I’m going to go out there, this is me, I have my right to have my place in the world."
I'm not much of a horror-movie person, so I guess it shows it's a good movie that I stayed to the end and was fairly entertained.

I found the body horror in the middle to be disturbing, but by the end it was so over-the-top it was easy to watch. Apparently 36,000 gallons of fake blood was sprayed over the audience.

I was confused over whether the Matrix and the Other Self shared the same memories/consciousness, and other people seem to disagree over it. If they don't share memories, it's hard to see why the Substance has such an appeal for the Matrix, who just gets to lose half their life. But Elisabeth seemed to need the motorcycle helmet to identify Sue's lover, and Sue seemed surprised by Elisabeth's mess. Maybe they just share the other half's emotions when they're in the coma, but not thoughts or experiences?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:41 AM on October 18 [2 favorites]


This was pretty great. I'm a little surprised to see the read I had on the theme isn't one I have (so far, anyway) seen elsewhere. I mean, the stuff about sexism, the cost of beauty, the different levels of value we ascribe to different levels of age, I see lots on that and it is there.

But to me, the movie is about how while we are younger, we tend to think of our older self as a separate person whose problems are their own. We really do not spend enough time thinking about how not eating right today will fuck future me's shit right up. Drugs and/or alcohol we are abusing? Yep, that is a check future me will have to provide payment on. Over and over, we make dicey decisions about today, knowing as we do so that we are taking health, longevity, happiness from our older selves. Even though oh yeah, we "are one."

I thought it was kind of great.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:15 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]


Like for real, I am fascinated by the people above who said it had no plot or that there isn't a clear relationship between Elizabeth and Sue.

All of the love and sympathy in the world but how old are you? Or if you're not super young, how freakishly healthy are you?

ALL of the IRL people I know who are middle-aged and I have spoken to about this read this 100% the same way as I did.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:56 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]


(That comment sound shittier than I meant. Apologies.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:26 AM on October 27


You know, I mostly liked this but at the same time I don't think it did or said anything that couldn't have fit comfortably into ninety minutes. I've been feeling that way about a lot of films lately, but I felt is especially strongly about this one.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:20 PM on November 11


« Older Movie: Torso...   |  Only Connect: Third Agers v In... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster