Review: The Substance – Beauty horror

Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

8.5/10

Starting off as a probing examination into body standards and ending firmly in body horror territory, The Substance is a slow burn until it’s grasping you by the throat with its shock and gore. Body horror is back on the menu.

In the centre of beauty-obsessed Los Angeles, Elizabeth (Demi Moore) is a hugely popular aerobics TV presenter who’s had a massive following for decades but is told by the channels’ head executive Harvey (Dennis Quiad) that she’s getting too old, ergo too unattractive, to continue selling this show—he’s in dire need of a much younger host.

At a time when she’s feeling at her most insecure about her appearance, she receives an experimental black market drug that creates from her body a whole new, younger body, whom she calls Sue (Margaret Qualley). She has full control over this new body, all the while keeping her original body hidden in the bathroom on a slow drip of nutrients—but the two bodies must be swapped every seven days.

And so who now takes the position of new host for this show? Sue, of course! She is exactly what Harvey is looking for, and she’s even exactly what Eliabeth wants from a body. There is an incredible slickness to the film at first, with the first half slowly and carefully engrossing us into the medical experiment Elizabeth takes part in and how exactly it works. But the second half is dedicated to how she abuses the drug and how consequently she (and her other self) begin to self-destruct from it.

The Substance certainly makes the build-up to its more gruesome moments worth it, with scenes of horrific body degradation reminiscent of the gorier moments from films like The Fly, Requiem for a Dream, Irreversible, and Society.

This film isn’t exactly entirely realistic or accurate, with plenty of medical details being overlooked. But that’s not the film’s priority. The Substance is designed to come across as a cautionary tale, as a commentary on beauty standards, and on this particular Los Angeles surface-level obsession, so it’s okay for this bizarre concept to throw a few medical inaccuracies out the window to serve its own story, message and aesthetic.

The film takes its time getting to the body horror, carefully establishing the joys and benefits of the drug, as well as the dangerous allure and subsequent disastrousness of it, but this makes the monsterish body horror all the more shocking and fun to watch, not to mention surprising with just how far the film takes it. Prepare your body.

DAVID MORGAN-BROWN