#33: the substance
body-ody-ody horror
Spoilers for The Substance ahead!
There’s this scene in Fleabag in which Fleabag and her sister go to a feminist lecture. The lecturer poses a question to the women in the audience: raise your hand if you would trade five years of your life for the so-called perfect body. Fleabag and Claire immediately do so, provoking scandalized gasps in the rest of the crowd. As they sink down into their seats in shame, Fleabag hisses “We are bad feminists!”.
At the risk of belaboring the joke, the scene works not at the expense of Fleabag and Claire’s insecurity, but at the expense of the question itself. The lecturer implies that choosing between body standards and a complete, fulfilling life is a moral choice for women, while conveniently ignoring the million reasons why we continue to buy into those standards even if we wish we wouldn’t. If you were offered the choice between the “perfect body” and five years of your life, would you consider it? What if it were one year? Or what if you weren’t sure how many years it would be, just that there would be a cost?
These are questions The Substance bothers to ponder extremely literally. The body horror film-du-jour, it made waves on the festival circuit despite polarized reviews. There’s no doubt the gross-out horror will instantly turn a swath of people off, but the film’s core conceit is a potent hook:
Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger. More beautiful. More perfect.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a 50-year-old actress who’s been dropped by her studio in search of a younger, hotter star. Feeling washed-up and worthless, she discovers the SUBSTANCE (always stylized in propaganda-friendly all-caps), which promises to create another version of her that’s superior in every way. With nothing else to live for, she injects herself with the lime-green serum, then proceeds to give birth (in a manner of speaking) to her better self, played by Margaret Qualley.
There’s a catch though. Each of these selves only gets seven days out in the world at a time. They must switch every week, and they must remember: despite having two bodies and seemingly two minds, they are one.
Once the movie sets up its premise, it’s off like a shot, thrumming with adrenaline for its full two hour and twenty minute runtime. The Substance loves indulging in its extremity; there are needle shots galore, body sores crusted with pus, close-ups of necrotic flesh clinging to life, and gallons and gallons of blood. It will probably feel like too much, because it is too much, but the film finds its footing in its commitment. What it’s stating - that the pursuit of physical beauty is a painful and hollow one - is not subtle or new. But The Substance doesn’t just want us to know these things— it wants us to feel them, viscerally, with the intense disgust that complete superficiality should inspire.
This in-your-face mentality makes The Substance feel fresh even as it adds to a long line of body / beauty horror movies. The film Les Yeux Sans Visage, about a disfigured woman whose father murders women to steal their faces for her, dates back to 1960, far before botox or juvederm ever hit the market. Going even further back, the film’s clearest reference point is The Picture of Dorian Gray from 1890, made explicit by the massive photo of a young Elisabeth Sparkle that sits in her living room, never aging.
In Oscar Wilde’s novel, Dorian Gray is an innocent youth who is painted by his long-time admirer. At first, he is unaware of his own beauty, but once it’s made clear to him, Dorian is immediately gripped by a fear of losing it. He wishes for his portrait to age while he remains young, and as his wish is granted, he throws himself into hedonism, exploring and pursuing pleasure in every direction until his sins become inescapable.
As entertaining as it is, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a morality tale. Dorian’s portrait reflects his soul as he tests out a hedonistic worldview, seeking pleasure without any consideration to the consequences. Although the portrait remains the titular symbol of the book, Dorian’s beauty becomes almost incidental to his lived philosophy. His physical youth is simply a gateway to a life of pleasure, so he can pursue his sins unencumbered by morality and responsibility— things that are the domain of the ugly and the old.
If The Substance is Dorian Gray translated for a modern, horror-loving, image-conscious audience, it makes two very perceptive changes.
While Dorian sells his soul for worldly pleasures, the women of The Substance never seem to experience much pleasure no matter how young or old they are. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley have limited dialogue in the film, often staying quiet while their counterparts talk at them. Their silence is a signal of their passivity. Even Margaret Qualley’s character, Sue, who should be experiencing all the pleasures beauty has to offer, is a mere passenger in other people’s narratives.
For instance, when she brings a stranger home for sex, we don’t see her face. Instead, the camera pans over her body, the man’s hands gratuitously on her ass, as though suggesting her hotness isn’t the point— it’s the way her hotness makes other people feel that matters. Elisabeth and Sue presumably have more money than they know what to do with, so as Sue climbs the Hollywood ranks, it’s not clear what reward she has to enjoy except for more of what she already has: the commodification of her body.
When she’s on late night talk shows, when she covers Vogue, when her TV show is a hit, the idolization is implied, but we never see her fans— even celebrity’s supposed pleasures are kept at arm’s length. Instead, again and again, we’re shown leering old men who appreciate Sue only for her sex appeal and her commercial potential (which, in their eyes, are the same thing). If Sue derives pleasure from her life, it’s solely in the knowledge that other people are enjoying her, regardless of whether that enjoyment tips over into exploitation. In contrast to Dorian, who understands beauty as a physical promise of pleasure, Elisabeth and Sue pursue beauty for beauty’s sake. They have no additional desires, no internal drive. They exist only as reflected in other people’s eyes.It’s easy enough for Dorian to hide his decaying portrait in his attic, but The Substance offers a much crueler deal. Its users have to swap back into their aging body every week; they’re forced to inhabit the other end of the bargain they’ve made. When Sue tries to cheat this deal, Elisabeth wakes up with parts of her flesh turned swollen and necrotic. It’s irreversible— what Sue takes, Elisabeth can never get back.
While Sue can delay, it’s inevitable that at some point, she must switch her consciousness back to Elisabeth, her body now death-tainted beyond anything natural age could cause. This cycle drives home one truth: there is no Sue and there is no Elisabeth. There’s only one woman, stealing from herself to live a temporary lie.
This is a twist for the modern woman. When we inject ourselves with Botox, take unapproved compound drugs, filter our faces on social media, it’s not some distant object that bears the unknown costs— it’s us, whether in the present or the future. The fact that Sue and Elisabeth exist in separate bodies is a potent visualization of complete alienation from your own self. It’s a first step towards a sensation many of us don’t need the SUBSTANCE to have felt: self-hatred, or rather hatred of the part of yourself that you see as ugly, worthless, and unlovable. If that self inhabited a separate body as it does in The Substance, would we be any less cruel than Sue?
These choices set The Substance apart in a crowded canon. Its visual extremity is reflected in the extremity of its world-building and the sharpness of its metaphors. The film takes its core concept, then follows it, beyond logic and into absurdity, to the absolute end of its line. A lot of audience members will be allergic to what The Substance is shoving down their throats. The film is an assault from start to finish, and the provocation is built into the DNA of what it’s trying to do.
I won’t blame anyone who won’t stomach it, but for those willing, you’ll be rewarded with an outsized cautionary fable that, while not subtle, is cuttingly perceptive about the experience it’s trying to portray. As much as she pays homage to towering greats like David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, and Stanley Kubrick, director Coralie Fargeat throws her own gauntlet down with The Substance. She seems to be laughing at all of them, saying: You think you know body horror? Try being a woman.
Culture Crumbs
NYT’s tips for how to watch scary movies if you’re a scaredy cat. Resonated deeply with a former horror avoider with a bonus of truly charming illustrations
Megalopolis in IMAX… which I cannot in good conscience recommend
The news that they’re making a Princess Diaries 3 with Anne Hathaway returning… after rewatching Ella Enchanted a few weekends ago, dreams really do come true
The revelation that Jeremy Allen White and Molly Gordon of The Bear fame are dating (?) or at least making out in front of the paparazzi
The poster for Babygirl — I’m obsessed with this movie
That’s all for this issue! Thank you for reading!
