The Substance

Is there a film genre called Antiseptic Body Horror? If not, Coralie Fargeat's follow-up to her debut Revenge might be the initial entry—at least for its first couple of hours. Her premise is an ingenious spin on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde twisted around a sci-fi/horror version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. But instead of a hidden away painting that ages so the protagonist can remain forever young, Fargeat devises an injectable serum accompanied by a strict protocol that enables a person to create a young and beautiful new version of themselves that they can share their life with on alternating weeks. Like Dorian Gray's slowly-changing portrait, the unconscious body gets hidden away in the conscious body's home, which in this case is the walk-in bathroom of the palatial LA penthouse owned by a former movie star turned popular TV aerobics show host turned fired-at-fifty has-been named Elisabeth Sparkle.

It's such a clever idea for a film, ripe with all kinds of feminist subtext and contemporary commentary on our appearance and youth-obsessed culture. To bring it to life, Fargeat has landed the ideal actress to play her protagonist. Demi Moore's own cannily publicized body and career regenerations, as well as her public struggles with being an aging female movie star, add extra-textural depth to the picture. And current It-girl Margaret Qualley (Sanctuary, Drive-Away Dolls, Kinds of Kindness) is terrific casting for Sue, the younger version of herself Elizabeth creates when she signs up for the titular super-secret black market program. It's just too bad Fargeat treats her premise even more disrespectfully than Elizabeth is treated by the shallow, sleazeball TV executive, played by a one-note Dennis Quaid.

The Substance has a lot of directorial style, but it lacks... well, substance. It's one of those movies where most everything is shot in tight widescreen closeups with the occasional fisheye wide-shots that showcase the art direction, with surrealistic settings and heightened sound effects, all edited at a breakneck pace to ratchet up the intensity. But this type of filmmaking quickly loses its power and just becomes exhausting, which is not a great quality in a two-hour and twenty-minute genre movie. The film explores the human body with Cronenbergian delight. But what Fargeat seems not to have learned from the great master of Body Horror is that the horror works better when the bodies on screen are relatable and allow us to tap instantly into the icky, creepy, deeply unsettling imagery we're shown. That's difficult when your story is set in the world of LA showbiz, where everything is already sculpted, waxed, Botoxed, plasticized, and digitally enhanced to start out with.

It's not just the bodies here that look sterile; everything in the film feels artificial, down to the sets and how they're photographed. So once Elizabeth starts poking and prodding herself, it doesn't really convey that all-important ick factor. Even when the titular substance takes hold and does its thing, it just looks like special effects done on the cleanest floor that ever existed. This is a splatter picture that makes it seem like even the grossest mess can be instantly cleaned up. As the movie progresses and things worsen for Elizabeth, Fargeat indulges in a few tried and true genre movie tricks. Laying a loud cracking sound effect over a shot of a character snapping their leg or arm bones into place is usually a surefire jump. However, if you've already shot everything from lighting cigarettes to eating shrimp with the same basic approach to sound, it becomes far less effective when it counts.

Of course, The Substance eventually delivers long-promised gross-out sequences when it finally reaches its third act, but by then, we no longer care about our dual protagonist. I was with Demi's character for a little while—I'm not one who automatically discounts the plight of middle-aged millionaire white women—but we quickly see how shallow and opportunistic her younger self is, which, I'm sure, is meant to be the point, but it only severs the empathy we have for this character. In one sequence, the original Elizabeth is about to go on a date with a guy who knew her in high school and finds her real self truly beautiful. But she misses the date because she becomes almost psychotically obsessed with looking perfect before leaving the house. This is one of the film's major set pieces, where the original, older character can't live up to the younger version of herself she sees on a giant billboard outside her apartment, but this is where I lost my connection to her and the film. Sorry, but if you're so shallow and looks-obsessed that you'll avoid the potential of real human connection, that's on you. Yes, society is somewhat to blame for warping your perspective, but give yourself some fucking "agency!" And since Elisabeth/Sue is the only female character in this movie, she's set up to represent what all women suffer from.

It doesn't help that the specifics aren't clearly established as to how the symbiosis works between these two bodies connected by one soul. At first, it seems they share a consciousness. After all, what would be the point of engaging in a risky process that creates a better you if you don't actually get to experience it? As the movie progresses, however, it seems that Elizabeth and her alter ego are two distinctly different individuals who just need each other's bodily fluids to survive while they trade off weeks of consciousness.

Not all genre movies must care about their own internal logic, but I can't think of many great ones that don't. The best horror, sci-fi, and magical realism pictures are grounded in some kind of normalcy so the supernatural or horrific things that occur feel appropriately disturbing, shaking up the established reality. In this movie, we're not only asked to believe that injecting yourself with a green liquid can induce a reaction that grows and expels another fully formed version of yourself out your back, but it also wants us to believe that rich, successful TV stars who live in grand penthouse apartments can do flawless home renovations by themselves. I have no trouble suspending my disbelief in the first instance; I have a harder time in the second. And Fargeat asks us to skip over basic logic at practically every turn in this movie, usually for a fairly cheap comedic or shock effect at the expense of narrative credibility. Worse, the picture is so interested in paying homage to other movies that it distances us even more from what's happening emotionally for the protagonist. When things really get out of control, the body horror imagery is as focused on getting laughs and referencing other films for the savvy viewer as it is about tapping into our own fears about ourselves. I guess for a film this surface-oriented, it's appropriate, but it's a huge missed opportunity.

In addition to giving us a protagonist for whom we feel less and less empathy, the film continuously condescends to its audience. There are only five actual characters in the story, yet when Elizabeth gets a call from a guy she bumped into on the street early in the film, Fargeat superimposes an image of the guy's face, and we hear a line of dialogue Elizabeth remembers him saying as if to remind us who he is and why she feels the desire to call him. Whenever I see this type of cinematic spoon-feeding, I immediately think, Oh, this movie is a movie made for stupid people, or at least for people who aren't really paying attention because they're on their phones or they went to get drinks at the lobby bar or their kitchen. Likewise, even though the subtext in this picture gets laid on as thick as it comes, we get treated to a reprise of all the lines of dialogue that encapsulate the themes in an audio montage near the end.

By that point, however, the movie has given up all pretense of being about anything other than a good time. The film is a good time, but to enjoy the climax, one must be laughing at the movie for how intentionally over-the-top and go-for-broke it is. Any attempt to make us actually feel something for the main character by the finale finale feels false. I'm sure the film will work for folks who just want a crazy, what-the-fuck-did-I-just-watch night at the movies. I just can't help but think this could have been achieved in ways that didn't sacrifice a terrific premise and such a committed lead performance.