Movie Review The Substance.

The Substance (2024)

Directed by Coralie Fargeat

Written by Coralie Fargeat

Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

Release Date September 20th, 2024

Published September 19th, 2024

The Substance is one of the best movies that I have ever seen. It's the best movie of 2024, so far. And I do not recommend that you go and see it. I understand that that is a strange series of sentences, a legit dichotomy. How can I say that a movie is among the best that I have ever seen and in the same paragraph not recommend that you go and see it? I will try my best to unpack these seemingly opposing thoughts.

The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkles, a fitness guru of many years' experience. Imagine Jane Fonda from the 80s, including her Academy Award winning acting career and you have the basic template for Elisabeth Sparkle. Though she looks incredible for her age, she's being pushed out of her fitness empire by a sleazy male executive, played by Dennis Quaid at his most ingeniously grotesque.

After surviving a horrifying car accident, almost unscathed, Elisabeth is recommended a special treatment called The Substance. Essentially, The Substance will create a youthful doppelganger who will share Elisabeth's life, splitting things 7 days at a time. With The Substance, Elisabeth brings her younger, supposedly better, self to life in the form of Sue, (Margaret Qualley). She's Elisabeth but with the pert, supple, and perfect body of a twenty-something.

For seven days this younger, allegedly better, version of Elisabeth will get to do all of the things that societal expectations, and stereotypical perceptions prevent Elisabeth from doing. This includes taking Elisabeth's former job as a TV fitness guru, sought after as a model and an actress. All the while, the mysterious people behind The Substance offer only dire warnings about consequences if Elisabeth/Sue fail to adhere to the strict rules of The Substance.

Well, of course, they don't follow the rules and, of course, there are consequences. My friend, dear reader, you are not prepared for the consequences of breaking the rules of The Substance. I am a veteran moviegoer. I have been doing this more than 30 years. I have seen some things at the movies. I've not seen anything quite like The Substance. The body horror of The Substance is terrifying, gut-wrenching, and extreme. It's justifiably extreme, but extreme may be an understatement for just how effective the body horror in The Substance truly is.

I've never been physically ill while watching a movie, but The Substance had me on the edge. In the end, I suffered a pretty serious panic attack and, as I write this, I am still recovering from seeing The Substance. Only my therapist will truly be able to help me unpack the feelings inspired by The Substance. This movie ripped into my psyche and found fears and anxieties that I didn't know I had regarding aging and my feelings and fears for the women in my life who have endured the intense, scrutinizing gazes that I've never had to endure.

I am speaking only as myself, other men may feel that they have been scrutinized over their bodies and their attractiveness, that's never been my experience. I can't say I am comfortable with my body, but I have never felt the kind of penetrating gaze that comes with people openly assessing, describing and feeling perfectly justified in sharing their feelings about the way I look. That's a privilege I've had as a pretty average looking duded. Demi Moore, on the other hand, none of us can begin to relate to her experience in the public eye.

Reflexively, many men will accuse Demi Moore of asking for it, asking for the attention and scrutiny of her looks. That's true but only to a point. If you say she was asking for the level of obsession with her looks that came with her remarkable fame in the 80s and 90s, you're out of your mind and merely trying to hand wave away the hard and deeply revealing conversation to be had about the way our culture dissects and inspects women's attractiveness in public spaces.

Casting Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle is a master stroke that takes The Substance from being a great movie to a masterpiece. Not only is Demi Moore an incredible actor, but her lived experience in being one of the most scrutinized human beings in the world brings a disturbing verisimilitude to The Substance. Demi Moore's bold, brave, raw performance is an all timer. If she doesn't win an Academy Award for her work in The Substance it will be a grave injustice.

And I can say the same about her remarkable other half, Margaret Qualley. Qualley, ever an actress who is up for anything after working with the likes of Yorgos Lanthimos, Clair Denis, and Quentin Tarantino, goes even further in her fearless approach to exploring characters in The Substance. Qualley's particular talent in The Substance is laying the groundwork for her co-star's performance. Qualley and Moore don't spend much time in the same scene but in playing the same character in very different context, Qualley is incredible at creating the space that Moore will explore in other scenes. That's an underappreciated talent.

As I said, I believe The Substance is the best movie of 2024 and one of my new favorite movies ever. And I will never be able to sit through it again. This movie was emotionally exhausting. The excruciating details in the production design and the sound design are breathtaking and also way to effective. It's literally too good. I feel like some people won't be able to handle just how effective some of this stuff really is. I don't want to spoil any aspect of this for someone who wants this experience that I had but I want to help those who may not be able to handle this by giving you an example of what you are in for.

There is an early scene in The Substance, before the 'Substance' of the title has actually been fully introduced. It's a scene in a restaurant where Dennis Quaid's slimeball executive is firing Elisabeth without actually saying he's firing her. Throughout the scene, Quaid is eating shrimp, and the camera is in a deep, fish-eye close up of his face and mouth. The sound is getting every noise of chewing, crunching, swallowing and lip-smacking as he licks his fingers and dribbles food back onto his plate, his messy fingers throwing little bits of shrimp and sauce as he gestures. For me, this is a horror greater than any Saw movie has demonstrated.

And that's an early scene in The Substance. There is still plenty of extreme body horror to come after that that I won't go into. I could write a lengthy essay on just the food horror of The Substance as director Coralie Fargeat uses food so effectively that more than 12 hours after seeing the movie, my appetite has not returned. Elisabeth is gifted a French Cookbook in the movie and where many other movies have turned such food into works of art, The Substance turns food into horror that could put David Cronenberg off his dinner.

Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat is an auteur of the highest order. She's made a movie in The Substance that hit me harder than any movie I've ever seen. I will never forget seeing the movie Midsommar for the first time and feeling like I had seen movies for the first time again. The Substance gave me that same feeling, as if I am seeing movies with new eyes. I feel as if I walked into The Substance as one person and I came out a very different person. This comes not just from the remarkably horrifying visuals but equally from the grotesque sights and the depth of the ideas.

Click here for my full-length review.