My Corner

September 2024

The Substance lacks its one requirement: substance.

For a film obsessed with what’s beneath the surface, The Substance seems more interested in aesthetic gloss than emotional depth. It wants to be Carrie meets Requiem for a Dream by way of Cronenberg, but instead plays like a fluorescent beauty horror that leaves you woozy and strangely unaffected.

The premise should work. Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a former fitness star fired for the sin of aging. She is tossed aside by a grotesque network executive named Harvey and stumbles into a black-market miracle drug called The Substance. It promises to create a younger, better version of herself. That version arrives in the form of Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, a bubbly, idealized clone who lives to please, pose, and stretch in Day-Glo spandex. Elisabeth and Sue must switch places every seven days and share a single consciousness. What could go wrong?

The parallels to real life are unnerving. In a time when injectable shortcuts offer the fantasy of a better body or a younger face, The Substance is a metaphor that writes itself. And when the film leans into that terror, it can be powerful. One of the best scenes involves Elisabeth quietly melting down in front of the mirror, removing layers of glamour until all that is left is a woman who cannot recognize herself. Demi Moore gives a performance full of raw ache and controlled fury. It is the kind of turn that reminds you why she once carried Hollywood films on her back.

But the movie does not always know what to do with her. As Sue, Qualley has the right physicality and presence, but the script gives her little dimension. She is a symbol of youth and nothing more. The central tension between Elisabeth and Sue never deepens. Their shared consciousness feels like a plot device instead of a real internal struggle. Without that complexity, the film becomes repetitive.

Visually, The Substance is a spectacle. Coralie Fargeat drenches the screen in hot pink, electric blue, and glowing green. It is gorgeous, surreal, and unrelenting. The production design, costuming, and cinematography create a world that feels just slightly off reality in the right way. The tone veers from horror to camp to satire and back again, with Dennis Quaid chewing every scene as the cartoonish villain Harvey. He is horrifying and hilarious, a perfect stand-in for the men who profit from female pain while demanding perfection.

Still, for all its boldness, The Substance never feels dangerous. Its commentary on beauty culture is clear from the first ten minutes and rarely evolves. Its body horror imagery, though well executed, starts to lose its shock value. The film flirts with the idea of going deeper but always pulls back just when it should lean in.

By the time it reaches its bloody climax, The Substance has exhausted its most interesting ideas. It ends with fire, chaos, and violence, but not with insight. It wants to be the movie that rips the lid off societal expectations around age and femininity. Instead, it just reaffirms what we already know: the pressure to be perfect is brutal, and chasing youth comes at a cost.

The film tries to be a punch in the gut. I wish it had been more of a slow, devastating bruise.