The Substance

Body horror as a (sub)genre is hard to pull off. It's not uncommon for elements or sequences of body horror to be an element of a larger story: think The First Omen, Longlegs, Divinity, Fresh, or the Saw series, amongst many others. A short film can sometimes sustain it all the way through, such as Prep, my favorite from last year's NHFF. But building an entire feature around such grotesqueries is far less common. The expense and difficulty of doing it well (read: practically), the way its very nature grants it a limited audience, and the care required to shape it into a meaningful narrative in the interest of avoiding dismissal as "gimmicky", combine such that not many get made. The last major "proper" body horror feature, i.e. one where bodies are deforming and contorting and changing in uncomfortable and disturbing ways throughout, was probably Crimes of the Future, released over two years ago. There are really only a few filmmakers currently working who have demonstrated an interest in pursuing such stories, two of whom are named Cronenberg, and the other being Julia Ducournau (Raw and Titane). The burden they bear means they're careful to ensure all of their movies are interesting and well considered, even if they cannot always guarantee home runs.

Coralie Fargeat has tossed her hat in the ring with this absolute banger of a sophomore effort.

The thematic entry point of her film is pretty straightforward and oft-discussed: the extreme pressure we put on women and their bodies, especially as they age. The machinations of Hollywood inadvertently shines an excellent spotlight on our cultural attitudes. Not many women over the age of 40 are asked to lead a big studio film, and they're often limited to certain smaller genres, never action or romance. Meanwhile, men of a similar age open all sorts of films, and tend to romance women 10 or 20 years their junior (both in the movies and real life). No matter their success, the industry is always hunting for the next "hot young thing". Even if looks never fade, there's a point at which the date on a woman's driver's license overrides everything else.

How else would you explain Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) being so callously cast aside by slovenly producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) after we're introduced to her absolutely burning up the screen leading a Jane Fonda-esque workout program? As he so kindly reminds her, "at 50, it stops". He manages to say this to Elisabeth's face in between bites of lard-covered shrimp which splatters over the table and his gaping maw, as she sits there in shock, looking as poised and gorgeous as ever, slamming your face into the double-standards of the industry. While a man can afford to be a pig, she must exercise incredible discipline to keep her job, and even then it's not enough. Which isn't to say this movie ignores the body standards to which we hold men: a young and unnaturally sculpted male nurse (Robin Greer) introduces her to The Substance, a mysterious underground gene therapy injection to "treat" aging. But as Hollywood is far more accepting of a wide variety of male body types, and culture is not constantly telling every single man they're a failure for not looking like a supermodel then chastising those same supermodels for being "too pretty", Fargeat is more concerned with the female experience.

And oh, what an experience it is...

As with any good body horror, the protagonist's deepest anxieties and fears and desires are made manifest, rendered all the more terrifying by their relatability, no matter your own physical appearance. Elisbeth's self-worth is so thoroughly wrecked by the cascade of passive aggressive comments about her body that she's willing to take a chance on a treatment of which she knows nothing save for some slick marketing materials, some snappy mantras, and a faceless yet powerfully soothing voice. It promises to unlock her genes, to create another version of her, more perfect, more capable, more alive. There are some strong hints of what that means, but it's not until Sue (Margaret Qualley) emerges in an incredibly gnarly, visceral scene that we begin to understand how The Substance works. And that's before we're introduced to the depths of what "STABILIZE EVERY DAY" and "SWITCH EVERY SEVEN DAYS" will entail, and the consequences which follow when those rules are inevitably bent.

The Jekyll and Hyde-tinged tale quickly spins into a world of carnality, the camera violently and uncomfortably objectifying Sue until she's reduced to a collection of body parts to be ogled. She smiles and giggles pleasantly, and men's jaws hit the floor. But in a world with no tolerance for imperfection, there is no end game: greater popularity and attractiveness simply ratchet up the pressure to maintain, incentivizing more and more extreme behavior, and increasing the chance of a loss of self.

But it's not just Sue: while Elisabeth has escaped the eye of the public, she hasn't escaped the eye of the audience, of you. We're still hyper focused on how she'll spend her time freed of the burden of self-care, meaning she's not so much objectified as examined. Her every action is scrutinized by the lens, drawing parallels between what's she's turning into and the forces that drove her here in the first place. They build and build and circle tighter and tighter until they result in a third act that would make modern-day Cronenberg blush.

The biggest key to this whole thing is the way we immediately feel Elisabeth's discomfort in her own skin. From early on, cinematographer Benjamin Kracun is firing on all cylinders, employing all sorts of techniques that make you feel on edge without calling too much attention to themselves. Unnatural symmetries, uncomfortable close ups, fish-eye lens, images stretching the boundaries of the frame, and many perfectly overhead shots to situate us as an outside, voyeuristic presence. The camera flows back and forth so fluidly between subjective and objective perspectives, often less concerned with the exact nature of reality than Elisabeth's experience of it. Kracun and Fargeat work in perfect concert to control the amount of empathy you feel towards her at any given moment, and take care to avoid that same rapport with Sue until the time it's most called for.

The whole technical team is doing phenomenal work. From the phenomenal sound design making the world feel textured and hostile, to Raffertie's pulsing electronic score that refuses to let you breathe for even a moment (and which I'm listening to on loop as I type this), and even the production design: hallways feel impossibly long and symmetrical, full of harsh, bright paint and a carpet which evokes the endlessly repeating pattern of the Overlook Hotel. Elisabeth's loft has a lovely view of the city, but something about it always feels wrong, artificial, distant despite being so close. To retrieve The Substance, she must venture to a mysterious drop box in a small, sterile, neon white room, empty save for the wall of numbered cubbies, whose entrance is a rusty, vertically sliding aluminum door surrounded by trash and other debris: you can taste the way that room must smell.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the astounding co-lead performances from Moore and Qualley. Both of them are game to an absurd degree, although it's Moore whose role is definitively heavier. For one, they're playing versions of themselves: Qualley the up and comer who's an impossible smokeshow, and Moore the aging actress, still gorgeous to us mortals but largely overlooked by the industry, whose last awards recognition came nearly two decades ago, and whose name everyone knows but whose films are largely forgotten. The irony is that Moore herself has never even been nominated for an Oscar, although what she accomplishes here most certainly deserves to be enshrined. While the themes of the movie aren't all that deep, her performance of a soul wrestling with a fundamental conflict of identity, the portrayal of a woman on the brink who ping pongs between fighting to retain her public life and giving in to her most base urges, is incredibly affecting and generates a tidal wave empathy, even as she spirals deeper and deeper into depravity. None of which is to overlook Qualley's work: doing so would be to miss the film reminding you of the tremendous effort it takes to perform the exact right type of femininity the industry demands. She's always on, never stumbling in her embodiment of America's bubblegum sweetheart, which makes the brief moments of intense rage that much scarier when they show up. Come the finale, while both women are crucial to its execution, it's Qualley who drives the action in what must have been a crazy difficult piece of acting, delivering it with incredible humanity and desperation, perfectly setting up the tragedy to come.

There are a bunch of sarcastic and ironic stabs of humor throughout, generating deep belly laughs at times where it might otherwise feel inappropriate. Absurdity is the overriding order of the day, and the script is precise enough to pack lines dense with a handful of tones without losing their poignancy, generating some unique reactions. Nowhere is that put into sharper relief than Quaid's absolutely bonkers performance. He came in swinging about as big as he possibly could, then dialed that up to 11. He's high energy, aggressive and animalistic and disgusting. His brashness is especially entertaining, as Harvey is one of the least self-aware people you'll ever encounter. He doesn't have all that much screen time, but each time he crashes into frame with a gaudy suit like a bull in a china shop, making him impossible to forget.

If the film has any weaknesses, it's a refusal to trust its audience. Its themes are naturally very surface level, so it can get away with paying little attention to layering in additional subtext, and what's there tends to tie directly back into the main theme. But most egregious is its concern that we're going to be lost when Elisabeth starts making decisions or feeling more complex emotions. To help explain this, as the second half progresses, we get half a dozen (or so) small flashback montages to earlier in the film, or at least hear the words uttered by others echoing in Elisabeth's ears. In none of those instances was there any question as to her motivation or reasoning: see my effusive praise of Moore's performance above. Thus, hitting those points again just grinds the scene to a halt and lays bare the moments in which Fargeat lacked faith in her own instincts or abilities. There are also a few small scenes which feel like concessions to a broader commerciality, breaking established parts of the world-building with seemingly little narrative reason in the process. Now, the ones that jump to mind are pretty freaking awesome, so it's hard to care once you're in it. But their inclusion raises questions which are never addressed, and thus leave things a bit more hollow than necessary.

Still, this is a striking announcement of the arrival of a new talent. As I alluded to above, Fargeat's debut was 2017's Revenge, a well-received but unheralded film which sounds like its embrace of hyper-violence wasn't enough to give any indication she had this in her (caveat: I haven't seen it, so I'm going off others' reviews and the plot synopsis to draw that conclusion). So this kind of serves as her official coming out party, especially for those outside her native France. It's unclear if she'll stick in this admittedly niche subgenre, although I hope she does: imagine if her, Brandon Cronenberg, and Julia Ducournau provide us with a steady rotation of nightmare fuel, constantly ripping open the scabs of society and shoving them in our faces? How exciting would that be?

What's that? You want to be able to close your eyes without screaming? Nah, what a boring life that would be.