Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Inner Child: Film Review of the Substance
★★★★1/2
By Geoff Carter
In a number of recent independent films, including Drive Away Dolls, Love Lies Bleeding, and the X Series there has been a blurring of boundaries. This is particularly true in the horror genre. Subgenres like body horror and hag horror have been reinvigorated as they emerge from the mottled swamp of film theory, mostly because a new generation of visionary filmmakers have used them to focus in on other thematics, particularly women’s issues. Psychological terror, a major aspect in elevated horror seen in The Witch, Hereditary, or Midsommar—more films with strong feminist bents—is another major element of the exploration of women’s issues through the lens of the horror genre.
Coralie Fargeat’s film The Substance weaves strands of body horror, science fiction, and satire into a spectacular over-the-top—and sometimes jaw-dropping—visual feast that examines the metrics of a woman’s value in today’s society in terms of her body.
The film opens as Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore)’s star is being installed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As the opening credits roll, the star is subjected to weather, traffic, and the vagaries of time. It grows dull and cracked. The movie cuts to an aerobic TV program starring an aged but well-preserved Sparkle. As it happens to be her fiftieth birthday, her fast-talking and producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) congratulates her and then abruptly dismisses her from the show. In a marvelous scene that is in equal parts disgusting and hilarious, Harvey piggishly slurps down shrimp while telling Elisabeth about how he needs a younger woman to host the aerobics show.
Upset, Elisabeth gets into a car accident while watching one of her billboards being taken down. At the hospital, a nurse touches her spine, musing that it would be ideal, and then slips Elisabeth a flash drive labeled “The Substance”, a product that promises eternal youth. Becoming increasingly desperate, Elisabeth orders the substance and injects the “one-time activator serum” which causes a younger version of Sparkle to emerge from her spine. The instructions state that her consciousness can only occupy one body for seven days and then switch. The inactive body is kept alive through intravenous feedings while daily stabilizer injections are necessary to keep the conscious body from deteriorating.
The younger body names herself Sue (Margart Qualley), auditions for Elisabeth’s old spot on the aerobics show, and is an overnight sensation. She is hailed by Harvey as the best thing he’s ever seen. He offers her the hosting job as the New Year’s Eve Show host. Reveling in the fame and attention, Sue is ever more reluctant to give up her body. One night, instead of switching bodies, she pulls extra stabilizer fluid from Elisabeth’s body. When she finally does switch, Elisabeth discovers one of her fingers is hideously deformed. She goes to the substance people that ignoring the switching procedure will lead to irreversible damage and worse.
Although they share the same consciousness, Sue and Elisabeth begin to hate each other. Elisabeth is angry at Sue for frequently ignoring the switching schedule while Sue is disgusted by Elisabeth’s binge-eating and slovenliness. Sue refuses to switch back, stockpiling stabilizer fluid from Elisabeth’s body. Waking up to discover she is a hunchbacked old hag, Elisabeth decides to terminate Sue, but addicted to the attention Sue is getting from her star status, cannot do it. Sue awakes and the two wage a pitched battle, resulting in Elisabeth’s death.
Desperate for more fluid as body begins deteriorating, Sue injects herself with the activator serum, leading to a grisly and horrendous conclusion.
On some levels, The Substance seems to be a straightforward horror/sci-fi film. On other levels, it is a difficult film to unravel. While parts of it are undeniably Kubrickesque (particularly the sequences when Elisabeth enters the substance suppliers’ space), others border on a combination of a Winesburg, Ohio sort of grotesqueness and nearly absurdist caricatures—specifically Harvey—to the grisliest sort of spatter horror. In short, The Substance pushes the envelope in more than a few directions, but it never strays far from its dominant thematic—the woman’s body politic.
One of the most ubiquitous and fascinating tropes in the film are the billboards featuring Elisabeth—and later Sue’s—images. There is also a larger-than-life portrait of a young Elisabeth which completely dominates her living space. Not only are these images indicators of the popularity and desirability of these women (woman?) but they also function as a steady reminder to Elisabeth and Sue as to what they were—or are—or should be—or have to be.
One of the billboards stands directly outside Elisabeth’s apartment. As Sue’s star rises, her image is put up. Elisabeth cannot move anywhere in her house without the image of Sue staring at her. Elisabeth is constantly under her gaze, reminding her of both what she was and what she no longer is. Her car accident which precipitates her introduction to “the substance” is caused by her watching her image being taken down from a billboard. This trope signifies Lacan’s mirror-image, the other—that which is simultaneously the self and the external, the ideal and the transience of fame.
Another fascinating aspect of Fargeat’s film is the camera’s utter absorption with the female body. During Sue’s television aerobic dance sequences, the camera lovingly closes in on every aspect of her body almost until the curves and lines become abstractions. During the initial transformation sequence, both Sue and Elisabeth’s nude bodies are lying side by side on the (very Kubrick-like) bathroom floor. Any hint of eroticism is eroded away through the realization of the horrible choices these women are required to make because of their bodies, and its effect upon their beings—and our society.
As Elisabeth, Demi Moore delivers a bravura performance ranging from desperation to acceptance, resignation, and finally, a seething and all-consuming self-hatred. As Sue, Qualley personifies a young irrepressible vitality that is completely self-consuming. It is eerie to see her (as part of Elisabeth’s consciousness) kowtow and beam at Harvey when he takes her under his wing. Being loved and accepted is more important than what this man did to her older self. The chemistry between these versions of this same woman is never loving—there is no mother and child reunion here, no self-love. The split is an act of survival and like most survival strategies, one must eat or be eaten.
The Substance is a harrowing, thought-provoking, and gripping film. Although the ending goes a little more than over the top (but for good reason), it is a film that needs to be seen.
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