The Substance

I had seen adverts for The Substance when it was released and I was aware that Demi Moore had been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (she lost to Mikey Madison for Anora) for her role, but apart from that I knew nothing about the story — oh boy, was I in for a wild ride!

We start off in a TV studio, Elisabeth Sparkle is finishing off an aerobic routine in front of the cameras. For those of you not around in the 1980s, it’s hard to explain how prevalent aerobics shows and workout tapes on audio and video were. If you were a celebrity then you had an exercise tape. I think this was first popularised by Jane Fonda and to me this is very much the inspiration for Elisabeth, except that Fonda has been able to maintain mainstream relevance whereas Elisabeth has been relegated to a cable TV show.

With the women’s toilets being out of order, Elisabeth nips in to the gents and while she’s in the cubicle she hears the show’s producer on the phone saying how old and irrelevant Elisabeth is and that she needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

This sends Elisabeth into a spiral and she flees the studio, jumping in her car knowing that her career is over. Her panic becomes even worse when she sees a billboard featuring her being torn down and, distracted, she gets into a car crash which results in her being taken to hospital.

Luckily she’s more shaken than hurt and is preparing to go home when a nurse says he has a final couple of checks before she leaves, muttering “You’ll be a suitable candidate” under his breath as he examines her back.

Returning home, Elisabeth finds a note in her pocket. On it are scrawled the words “It changed my life” and within the paper is a USB drive bearing the words “The Substance”. Elisabeth initially thinks nothing of it and throws the USB stick away only to retrieve it later and plug it into her television.

The video on the USB opens with the words “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger. More beautiful. More perfect.” The advert introduces “The Substance”, a single injection that allows you (the matrix) to create a younger and better version of yourself. The catch? You have to share your life with each other — 7 days for one, 7 days for the other in perfect balance.

Intrigued, Elisabeth decides to make the call, I mean who wouldn’t want to be a younger better version of themselves?

After receiving The Substance and injecting it, a new, younger version of Elisabeth is birthed from her back. Naming herself Sue she now has 7 days in the real world while Elisabeth is unconscious then on the 7th day they must swap allowing Elisabeth access to her life again.

During her time awake, Sue decides to audition to become Elisabeth’s replacement on her aerobics show which she of course gets and this begins a rapid ascent to fame. Meanwhile Elisabeth is becoming more and more reclusive, feeling less relevant and discarded by the industry and fans that she gave her life to.

After a few weeks, with fame and lust going to her head, Sue starts to break the protocol and claim extra time over the allowed 7 days. This has devastatingly irreversible effects on Elisabeth but Sue doesn’t care as long as she’s having a good time, hiding Elisabeth out of the way so she can party and bask in the glow of the public’s adoration.

Soon though, the rule breaking catches up with Sue, threatening her status as a star. What lengths will Elisabeth to regain the life that was once hers?

Why Should I Care?

The Substance is supposed to be a biting satirical look at how we value beauty over age and experience. That the entertainment industry treats women terribly and youth triumphs over everything.

And while the film does almost do this, I don’t think it quite makes the point it thinks it does.

The first issue is that we don’t know enough about Elisabeth to feel anything for her while she’s trying to make the choice to use The Substance or not.

She has a star somewhere (I assume the Hollywood walk of fame) but what type of things did she do to deserve it? Was she a nice person or a complete bitch to everyone she worked with justifying her decline to exercise TV? Or was she a really nice person and a philanthropist who has been cast aside purely because she got old?

I don’t know, and therefore I don’t really care about her too much to begin with. Sure, the TV Producer IS a pig, that much is obvious but he didn’t put her in the position she’s in now, something happened to land her there.

While the lack of dialogue is certainly a stylistic choice — Demi Moore hardly speaks in the film — most of the dialogue comes from slimy producer Harvey (played by Dennis Quaid), so we never really get a full sense of her character and whether she deserves our pity at the start of the film.

I only really started to care when she was being mistreated by Sue, rather than Harvey the TV Producer, and that’s an odd direction for the film to take.

I also didn’t really care much for Sue either. Again with the lack of dialogue we really don’t get to see any personality other than someone who craves the limelight and likes to party so when things start to go wrong I didn’t really feel sorry for her.

Sound Design Sickos, Makeup Maestros

🎃Warning! Spoilers for The Substance ahead!💉

The sound design on this film is mental. You should definitely not watch this film if you suffer from misophonia, there’s so much squelching, bone creaking and cracking that it was verging on disgusting and I wasn’t even wearing headphones (thankfully).

But the sound is part of the film, it’s at the heart of a lot of scenes and is almost like another character. As disgusting as it is, that is the entire point. It sets you on edge, makes you uncomfortable and adds an extra layer to the practical effects.

Speaking of the effects, they are AMAZING! It’s so common these days for everything to be CGI and to just have the actor in a motion capture suit for them to digitally slap on the effects later, but everything here is real.

The standard makeup effects are great too. When Elisabeth is getting ready for her date with Fred, an old school friend, we can tell that she’s taking care over her appearance — the floor is scattered with a multitude of outfits that she’s tried on and discarded. She’s finally found an outfit she’s happy with and puts on a light touch of makeup, with some striking red lipstick to match her dress.

She looks stunning.

But as she’s about to leave, she catches sight of her reflection and she returns to the mirror and applies more makeup. This instantly ages her.

Then every time she tries to leave she returns to the mirror applying another layer of makeup.

And again.

And again, until the layers of makeup have basically made her look haggard and unrecognisable.

This is in complete contrast to the youthful and serene looking Sue, unconscious in the bathroom hidey-hole, who can get away with just a hint of pink lip gloss.

And because of this indecision over her looks, and then ruining what had started off as a perfectly lovely makeup look she refuses to leave the house and stands Fred up — a man she truly had a chance of being happy with.

I think this is probably the most poignant scene in the film: Elisabeth looks beautiful but thanks to her ageing and losing her job (and therefore relevancy) she feels she no longer has a place in the world. Without the spotlight is there even a version of Elisabeth that belongs anywhere?

I’m Not Often Surprised But This Got Me!

The Substance was in no way, shape or form the film I was expecting! I mean I knew from the trailer that there were two characters seemingly from the same person.

I (naïvely) thought that The Substance would be like a Jekyll and Hyde serum where Elisabeth injects herself and transforms into a younger version so it was basically her in a younger body.

What I was not prepared for was for Elisabeth to birth an entire human being from her back who would then have to syphon off spinal fluid in order to stabilise herself so she wouldn’t disintegrate.

In the scene where Elisabeth first takes The Substance in her bathroom and she collapses to the floor, I honestly thought it would pan up to the mirror and we’d see her standing up as the younger version of herself, instead what I got was skin tearing body horror that was both fascinating and repulsive at the same time.

And can I just give kudos for Demi Moore rolling around naked on the bathroom floor? That would be daunting for a young actress let alone someone of an age that’s usually being told to cover up and sit quietly in a corner.

Timeless Yet Timely

The Substance is an odd film in that it exists but we don’t know when.

The first scenes of the film, set in the TV studio, are very reminiscent of the 1980s with the muted colour palette and brick walls of the exercise set.

But then we move to the studio corridors which has a loud reddy-orange with a geometric pattern which is harks back to the 1970s style carpet from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.

Harvey’s clothes are also very 1970s coded with wide lapels and a velour or shiny look as well.

And while we don’t see much technology, we do have Elisabeth’s television which is a modern flat screen.

This has a bit of a disorientating effect as while the events of the film happen, they’re not anchored to any particular point in time. The film can’t age because it’s ageless unlike the characters which is an interesting juxtaposition.

Who Is The Real Monster Here?

It would be easy to see Sue’s behaviour as monstrous, after all she ignores the 7 day rule which prematurely ages Elisabeth and turns her into what she fears most — an old hag.

But remember what The Substance advert and the voice on the phone tells Elisabeth: You are one.

Elisabeth is Sue and Sue is Elisabeth. Therefore Sue’s actions are merely a reflection of Elisabeth’s desires, she’d do the same if she were in Sue’s shoes because she is in Sue’s shoes.

And when Elisabeth goes to kill Sue, is she killing her because of what Sue did to her? I mean it can’t be undone so it won’t fix anything. Or is she killing her because of the constant reminder of what Elisabeth once had and has now lost?

And this doesn’t make Elisabeth the monster of the film either, she just wants something that she’s lost and at the last minute realises that the only way she can obtain it is through Sue.

And why is that?

Well you could then say that Producer Harvey is the monster. But is he? After all, he is just putting what people want on the television, and they want someone that’s younger that Elisabeth.

And that leads us to the real monsters of this film.

Us.

It’s personified by the New Year’s Eve audience at the end of the film, but they’re just a stand in for us as the true audience.

With us going along with the beauty ideals, not demanding appropriate age representation in the media we consume and not consuming media featuring older people we are complicit.

And when I say “older” here, I’m not talking about Jane Fonda (88), Dame Helen Mirren (81), Meryl Streep (77) or Dame Judy Dench (91), I’m talking about women over the age of 40 who regularly get sidelined in favour of younger women put in roles that make no sense.

As an audience we’re happy to consume media where the male protagonist is approaching 60 and is paired with a woman in her late 20s and we’re told that’s normal — it’s not but we let it ride.

I was expecting the film to end when the second “birth” took place and the “Monstro Elisasue” is revealed. It would have left an interesting question hanging about what would happen next, but we had another 20 minutes to go (which could have been cut to 10 minutes) where “Monstro Elisasue” addresses her “adoring” fans who turn on her when all she was doing was trying to be what they wanted and expected of her — a younger and better version of herself.

The scene where the audience is covered in blood, whilst I appreciated the visuals and the message, was far too long and over-indulgent and “Monstro Elisasue” randomly exploding in the middle of the street was not a way I’d have chosen to end this character’s life but it had to end somewhere I guess.

The film is bookended by a shot of the Elisabeth’s star. At the start of the film we see the star, like the woman it represents, ageing.

As the seasons roll by the star fades and cracks mirroring the career of the woman it celebrates and before we cut away to the exercise scene someone walking over the star drops their food on it, covering it with bright red ketchup.

Cut to the end of the film when Elisabeth’s disembodied face drags itself to the star that once meant so much to her and then dissolves, again leaving the star covered in red, the start of the film foreshadowing its bloody and gruesome end.

Unlike a lot of horror films, particularly body horror, The Substance isn’t just frightening on a “gross you out” level, it grosses you out on a attitude level as well.

We are part of the problem whether we like it or not and and the film asks you to examine that: your biases, your participation in the way beauty standards are upheld and how we treat people outside of our own age groups.

The Substance is certainly full of, well, substance and worthy of your time. Just don’t eat dinner before watching it!

Watch The Substance if you’re fed of of having to have a beauty routine just to please a few men whose opinions you really couldn’t care less about if you were honest.

Where to Watch:

Apple TVFandango At HomeAmazon VideoMUBIHuluMUBI Amazon Channel

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