The Substance is the best and maddest film of the year (so far). Caveat: as long as you like a full portion of body horror and are happy to be spattered head to toe in blood and mutant body parts.
A self-confessed fan of David Cronenberg, French director Coralie Fargeat has taken his seminal, gory-gooey aesthetic and amped it up to the delirious max. And just when you think she can’t possibly go any further, along comes an even bigger tsunami of twitching, writhing flesh. It’s Cronenberg on crack.
Demi Moore (brilliant and bold) plays ageing Elisabeth Sparkle, one-time Hollywood starlet now holding on for grim death to her Jane Fonda-esque workout goddess TV glory. About to crush any faint hope she has is Dennis Quaid’s gloriously OTT producer, who’s ready to hurl her onto the trash heap in favour of a fresh, nubile sex bomb.
Then chance leads Elisabeth to the secretive, mysterious ‘Substance’, a treatment which promises to renew her to her best, youthful self – but better. It’s a spine-splitting, eye-popping ‘birthing’ of this wonder version of Elisabeth, who appears in the form of Sue (Margaret Qualley).
The only catch: Elisabeth and Sue have to alternate every seven days, one living in the real world while the other is dumped as a carcass in Elisabeth’s bathroom. Any slight divergence from this routine and there’ll be merry hell to pay.
Of course, Sue is going to revel in being the young, adored Elisabeth to the power of 10. And, likewise, Elisabeth will absolutely rage with jealousy seeing Sue in the spotlight. And, oh boy oh boy, do things go wrong.
As a satire on the fate of older women among the horny Tinseltown patriarchy, it’s fairly basic. And there’s little in the way of complexity or cerebral, erm, substance (if you want that, look elsewhere). But as a pulsing, pumping blitzkrieg of pure entertainment, this is a never-ending delight.
Some viewers may take exception to the camera’s lingering, salacious obsession with Qualley’s buttocks, but surely this is a deliberate, discomfiting feminist critique of the male gaze; a more oblique shade of exposition than allowing the dialogue to carve out an easily digestible thesis for audiences.
Fargeat does grotesque deliciously, and in every way. Besides the gore, her extreme close-ups of Quaid chowing hideously through a plate of prawns are equally disturbing. And everything is delivered with hyper-vivid, whip-crack precision to a stuttering, brain-melting techno soundtrack.
It all climaxes way beyond where you could dare imagine it might end, in a riotously hilarious torrent of blood the likes of which you might never have witnessed before.
A sledgehammer parable for the Ozempic generation, The Substance, with all confidence, is an instant classic.
