• The Substance

5/24/25 (Sat)

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat lets herself get carried away in what starts out as a clever conceit but fizzles out from a lack of either courage or imagination. Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging film actress now out of her prime, has managed to find renewed fame in aerobics videos à la Jane Fonda. As she turns 50, however, she proves too old even for that as the studio unceremoniously dumps her in search of younger blood. Having thrived on her youth and beauty, she is distraught to see her own mature body in the mirror. In desperation, she turns to a mysterious secret treatment known as the Substance, delivered in a locker in an abandoned building. When she injects herself with the fluid, her body splits apart and, Alien-like, out crawls a younger, more beautiful version of herself who calls herself Sue, with a subtle difference in looks that might reflect her fantasy of herself. While the two bodies are separate in form, the instructions with the drug emphasize that they are parts of the same entity, presumably sharing the same consciousness.

Skipping the details, the deal is basically that Elizabeth and her newer version are to switch off for one week each: as the active self runs around and lives her life, the other lies lifeless at home like a deflated doll, sucking up nutrients through her veins until her turn rolls around again. The instructions warn that this schedule must be maintained without fail.

During her initial week out, Sue soon gets her former self’s old video job, capitalizing on her rejuvenated looks in a more blatantly sexual approach. She wins a condition that allows her to take off every other week (to see her sick mother, she claims). She initially returns home dutifully and lets her former self out, but as her ratings and fame rise, her ego begins to take over. She brings a hunky guy home and decides to go a bit overtime. When Sue finally switches back, Elizabeth discovers that a finger has withered with age. Fearful and lonely, she arranges to meet up with an old schoolmate who has expressed interest. But as she puts on her makeup, she can’t abide her older look relative to her new version; she reapplies the makeup and lipstick repeatedly but is unable to wipe away her 50-year-old look, and ultimately chooses not to see him at all.

As Sue gets increasingly sloppy, Elizabeth becomes older like a reverse Dorian Gray, turning eventually into a crone. Thanks to Sue’s soaring popularity, she is given the honor of hosting the annual New Year’s Eve show. Elizabeth tries to terminate the experiment, which would effectively kill off her new self, but Sue violently prevents her. Sue then finds herself transformed into a horrifying monster. She is nevertheless determined to appear on the show. She rushes to the studio and disguises herself until the moment she’s on stage. It is then when the consequences of her action really begin to hit, sparking a monstrous bloodfest on national television. In the final scene, Elizabeth, nothing but a detached face, squirms onto her cracked Hollywood square and melts into a formless puddle, which is then swept up by an oblivious cleaning crew.

While the two selves appear to have separate identities, the idea presumably is that Sue’s ego reflects a side of Elizabeth’s personality that simply can’t give up the superficial lure of youth and beauty even as she destroys herself. The script, though a bit confused, gets the point across ably enough in the first half, only to fall apart entirely after that in a serious lack of imagination. It reminded me of Get Out, another social satire that also suffered from a Hollywood-style ending. The latter, however, at least followed some train of logic, tenuous though it was. Here, the final half hour was just ridiculous, even for a horror film. How did the monster walk through the streets without attracting attention? How exactly did she get into the theater and on the stage? Why is no one pulling her offstage, and why is the audience just staring? It gave the impression that the director ran out of time and invented something in a panic. Carrie did the blood thing much better.

Dialogue and characterization are also not the director’s strong points. The TV producer in particular was like a silent-film character in his over-the-top misogyny, not helped by the weird close-ups that the director kept inserting. He seemed to be acting in a different film. The director used a sledgehammer to make some pretty obvious points. She apparently retained final cut rights, but she would have benefited from cooler heads. The special effects were also impressive but tiresome after a while. The whole monster bit was simply unnecessary; the extreme aging by itself would have been horrific enough for most of us given the general fear of getting older. The director didn’t have the courage or ability to push that to its limits, turning this into a mere horror flick rather than a true satire.

Margaret Qualley is fine as Sue, but the movie belongs to Demi Moore, whose portrayal of the no-longer-young actress with the bruised ego was fearless given the overlap with her own career (though it must be said that she looks incredible for 60-something – it’s funny that they put her age here at 50; wonder if that was her doing). The full nudity was shocking but not at all gratuitous given the context, and she deserves plaudits just for putting herself out there. A very impressive turn. Her Oscar nomination was well deserved.

The movie has its moments but fails to fill the many holes in the plot or carry through with its convictions, a pity after the promising first half. Bummer.