The Substance (2024)

When Coralie Fargeat's debut Revenge was released back in 2017, I was telling everyone who would listen (so not very many people) that she was a director to look out for. Her splattered revenge thriller debut harked back to a numerous number of video nasties from the seventies whilst firmly planting itself in a society where violence against women was being widely addressed by the mainstream media.

Her follow up, the Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley fronted The Substance, is streaming/distributing platform Mubi's biggest release to date. Posters and adverts have been plastered everywhere you look for The Substance, which is especially welcoming for an independent production company, and Fargeat's sophomore effort offers a no-holds barred body horror shock fest in the vein of David Cronenberg, by way of J.G Ballard.

Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a woman who was once a huge Hollywood star but who now presents a home workout TV show as she approaches her fiftieth birthday. Early on she overhears an executive for the show Harvey (a deliciously horrible Dennis Quaid) demanding the swift end to Elisabeth's career on his show as he wants someone younger to take her place.

The sexualisation in the opening half of the film is stark, yet deliberate; Havery's demands over wanting a younger model to take Elisabeth's place to bump ratings are obviously wretched and yet we're not surprised whatsoever when Elisabeth's replacement does indeed skyrocket viewing figures, because, as Fargeat is keen to emphasize, that is the world we live in.

The film's title is how exactly we get Elisabeth's replacement. The underground titular item, offered to her by a doctor in a hospital after she escapes a car crash in an early sequence, promises to transfer her into an enhanced version of herself. This enhanced module of her own person lasts for seven days before returning to her current self for the next seven days and continuing in this pattern; essentially these two different parts of Elisabeth must live together 'as one' each relying on and trusting the other, and any meddling with the substance's strict instructions could result in permanent damage.

So from the outset we know where we're going to end up, but it's how we get there that makes The Substance such an eminently watchable and hugely entertaining experience. Julia Ducournau's Raw (2016) is a touchstone here, as more pertinently perhaps is her follow up, 2021's Palme d'Or winning Titane with its car oil running through the film's veins. Here, that substance is quite simply 'The Substance'. The range of influences used by Fargeat are far and wide; Cronenberg's The Brood (1979), Crash (1996) and Crimes of the Future (2022) all entered my head as I let The Substance simply engulf me, but arguably the film it reminded me most of was Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon (2016), from which it draws similar strands of plot-line in terms of a woman's age being held against them in their zone of work. That point brings you back to one of The Substance's main through-lines in terms of potential feminism struggling with sexism in modern society, although the film's setting and style suggests a clash of time periods that veer into Ballardian science fiction.

Moore and Qualley are both superb; it's particularly interesting to see Moore delve into a film that shares certain similarities in terms of attempting to depict feministic struggle with Striptease (1996), a much maligned and in my opinion, underrated film. Both Indecent Proposal (1993) and Disclosure (1994), both Moore vehicles again, also sprung to mind as The Substance sprints at breakneck speed to its messy and slightly uneven conclusion.

The final twenty minutes are so not completely unhinged as some of the as yet uninitiated in body horror have claimed, but they are once again entertaining- the problem is that it feels slightly inevitable, and isn't as engaging as what's come before. In some ways the film has to finish in the way it does, and although the final shot of the film perfectly brings the film full circle, I felt slightly detached from the final act- and to some extent that's another compliment to the preceding couple of hours.

Raffertie's sharp and pounding score is again reminiscent of Cliff Martinez's work on The Neon Demon, and works most effectively when Elisabeth's two forms are battling each other, with her true self fighting who she wishes she still was- or rather what societal acceptance requires her to be.

But there's no message that swamps the film and bogs it down; rather Fargeat's points are there to be seen should you spot them, all interwoven into an extraordinarily addictive and engrossing film, one that is flawed but such a huge amount of fun that it's without doubt one of 2024's most enjoyable trips to the cinema. 8.1/10