One of the best movies of the year is Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, a horror-dark comedy that comments on modern-day beauty standards and the stigma around aging, especially for women. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth, a Hollywood star who's made a fortune from her long-running workout show, now being pushed out because of her age. Desperate to stay relevant and what society deems as beautiful, Elisabeth turns to a sketchy drug that can reverse her aging.
Margaret Qualley co-stars in The Substance as Sue, Elisabeth’s younger version who Hollywood falls in love with. As our protagonist switches back and forth between the different versions of herself, the film features an up-close look at her body modification through graphic and bloody moments. If you’re a fan of body horror, you’ve got to check this movie out—it’s got great prosthetics work and includes one of the most shockingly gross sequences of the past decade. We've already broken down the film's ending here at 1428 Elm and honestly, we're still thinking about it. The sequence truly is what would happen if David Cronenberg's The Fly and Brian De Palma's Carrie met and had a baby.
As a quick semi-spoiler-free rundown in case you haven’t checked out The Substance yet, the film reaches a climax when a third version of Elisabeth, Monstro Elisasue, emerges—a blend of both women appearing in gnarly fashion. Set to host a live televised New Year's Eve show, Monstro Elisasue gets on stage and shocks the audience. And what's next is something you'll never forget! With this latest version of Elisabeth, it's impossible not to draw comparisons to Brundlefly from The Fly, protagonist Seth Brundle's transformed state as he becomes half man, half fly. And there's no doubt the prom massacre from Carrie influenced Fargeat—she used 36,000 gallons of fake blood for the scene, after all!
While being interviewed by Letterboxd, Fargeat listed The Fly, Carrie, and The Shining as influencers for her when writing The Substance, sharing:
"All those movies, filmmakers have seen the work of other filmmakers who’ve digested what they’ve seen and what other filmmakers did. I love the fact that there is some kind of common creativity somewhere that each one redigests in its own way, with its own world and its own theme. I truly believe that we are, in the end, the result of what we watch, what we read, what we’re exposed to, and all of this lives with us… We are growing ourselves, feeding ourselves from all those influences, whether they are conscious or unconscious."
In the same interview, Fargeat also shared that while she hasn’t seen the 1989 Brian Yuzna film Society, she’s heard enough comparisons between it and The Substance that she’s added it to her list. That’s one I watched after seeing The Substance in theaters and it’s another great choice if you’re in the mood for body horror.
The all-out blood-fest sequence is a great homage to these classic horror movies I watched countless times growing up, while also bringing something new to the table. While talking about the ending, Fargeat explained that “the monster comments in general on women’s bodies, whether it is the a*s, whether it is the boob, whether it is the smile… It’s the rebellion; we’re going to mix it and digest it and totally explode it.” And that explosion makes for a fantastically gross moment.
But don’t just take our word for it; watch it for yourself to see what you think! The Substance is now streaming on Mubi and available to buy for $19.99 on Amazon Prime Video.