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The Substance Review
Image Credit: MUBI
Loading...Sometimes you can’t stop hearing about a movie, and eventually peer pressure beats you down, and you finally decide to check it out.
Such is what happened to me this past weekend when we decided to go to the theater and I realized The Substance was still playing. I just could not escape friends on the social medias talking about how much they liked the new body horror flick by Coralie Fargeat. So I relented to having not been able to escape word of mouth, and I got my wife and me tickets.
The Substance is the story of over-the-hill celebrity and exercise guru Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore. On the wrong side of 50 and fading fast, Elisabeth is let go from her morning exercise program. After a car accident puts her in the emergency room, she is given a strange USB device and note by her physician’s assistant.
The note and device tell her of The Substance, a… well, a substance… that allows you to recall your youth and live life as the best, hottest version of yourself. After initially resisting, Elisabeth finally calls the number provided and becomes the newest client.
And thus is born Sue, Elisabeth’s new self and alter ego, played by Margaret Qualley. Sue takes the job opening that Elisabeth left behind and begins building herself up as a huge new star.
Of course, along the way, she begins ignoring some of the rules that come with The Substance. But what are a few tacky-tacky rules when it comes to superstardom? Right?
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ The tone of The Substance is nothing I would call consistent, and I mean that in a very good way. It’s a movie that, instead of sticking to one mood, decides to sample them all. It goes from depressing to empowering to basically just a T&A show to vengeful to full-on bewilderingly hilarious. It’s a smorgasbord of styles, and whatever you are looking for in a movie, it can likely satisfy you.
You have to buy in and be engaged to appreciate it, but if you are, you’ll find multiple moments of the flick seemingly aimed right at you. And while there are certainly reasons why you might not be on the same wavelength as the picture, I definitely was. From the opening all the way through, I found the entire tale highly interesting. So when it kept offering up new moods for me, I shifted my expectations and went along for the ride. And I had a blast because of it.
+ The movie goes in directions you are highly unlikely to see coming, especially in the third act where things take a dramatic shift. It’s not just the tone that is altered, but the story, as well. And by the time you get to the end of the movie… well, if you told me you saw coming what we got, I’d call you a liar.
Obviously, being unpredictable is usually a plus, as long as that unpredictability fits within the confines of the universe of the story. And everything more-or-less does here. It’s hard to say more without spoilers, I guess. But if you are watching it and wondering where the “horror” of it all is, just… stick with it. You’ll be paid off.
+ Wait, a third Up? Is that allowed? Well, they are my articles, and I’ll do what I want! What this one boils down to is an aspect of the film I couldn’t take my mind off of while watching it… until the third act came along and blew up my Ups because of how wild it gets.
The Substance likely won’t win because the Academy hates horror, but I have not seen a movie all year that paid as much attention to sound design and sound editing as this one. The worst part of watching The Substance in theaters was that I couldn’t experience it with headphones on. But the random noises and effects and score are all so potent to this film; I’d love to see it get awarded for such come Oscars season.
– Not for the weak of heart, The Substance is disturbingly gory and stomach-churning at various points. If you have a delicate constitution for grossness, this really might not be for you. It does not shy away from focusing in on some disgusting body horror elements and putting them right in your face.
THAT SAID… I’m typically pretty queasy about things, and it never got too much for me, so I can say maybe it’s not actually THAT bad? But my wife had to turn away at different moments, and she relied on me to tell her when it was okay to turn back. So it’s purely a subjective situation. You may go in expecting the worst but finding out it’s all okay. Or it could really get to you!
– The Substance is full–FULL!–of “don’t think about it too hard” moments that will ruin your immersion in the experience if you let them niggle into your brain. Swaths of the flick don’t make any reasonable sense, and if you are a person who demands a movie be logically cohesive at all times, this will frustrate you to no end. During the drive home, we discussed a lot of the “But wait…” moments of the movie before hand-wringing them all away as “this isn’t a movie where you should think about these things”.
And people have different reactions to flicks like that. And some people are inconsistent on it from movie to movie. So I can’t say whether these will be the kinds of things that bother YOU or not, but you’d be hard-pressed to miss them because they are very obvious.
