Film review: The Substance

Given the opportunity, would you want to become your ‘better’ self? Would you properly appreciate the effects that would have – that an improved version would entail a perceived 'inferior' version? Would it actually get you what you were looking for? Or would it just put that satisfaction further out of reach?

These are the questions at the heart of The Substance, essentially Oscar Wilde’s A Picture Of Dorian Gray as told by Black Mirror. The first of them falls to Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) in the opening throw, a once Oscar-winning actress-turned face of a morning keep-fit show, who’s found herself thrown on the scrapheap for being too old. Following a car crash, she’s offered the chance to get her youth, her looks, her status as a woman of worth back by using a mysterious, one-time drug called The Substance to split herself in two, creating “a better you”.

The rules are so simple they’re passed on in a few unambiguous slogans. You get seven days as yourself, then the new, improved version gets seven days, no more, after which you must switch. One gets to live their life, keeping themselves righted with a stabilising jab, while the other lies comatose, fed through a drip. Remember: you are one. There is no you and them. You must find balance. You can’t escape from yourself.

At first, she’s onto a winner. The bouncy, fun, ultra-toned younger model Sue (Margaret Qualley) walks the audition for Elisabeth’s old job, her perfectly-shaped charms enrapturing sleazy, unsubtly-named TV exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the man who previously binned Elisabeth off. She’s cool, she’s popular, she’s sexy, she’s everything Hollywood wants in a woman, and everyone loves her. Men are goo in her hands, women think she’s the shit. Then she lands the biggest job on TV: hosting the network’s grandstanding New Year’s Eve show.

Back in the apartment, though, things quickly start to go south. As balance starts getting out of whack, the reckless youthful impetuousness of Sue quickly widens the gap between the older, more responsible Elisabeth, who feels like she spends her time reclusively cleaning up her mess. Resentment grows: Sue becomes addicted to the high life and outside approval, Elisabeth begins to feel uselessly second best next to her biggest rival. When Sue begins to take extra days by extracting serum from the prone Elisabeth, it leads to dire consequences.

It’s excellent. You will not see a more bananas film this year. Neither will you see one quite so expertly and creatively cut. Every single shot is designed for some sort of visceral, occasionally physical reaction. When the getting’s good, the radiant smiles, perfect bodies and lingering butt shots are all California perfect, inviting and tantalising, caught in hallucinatory, cuddly, hyper-reality. When things are shit, the discomfort will make you feel awkward to be part of it.

You also won’t see anything as darkly cutting, or gloriously repulsive, either. It’ll make you stressed and car sick. If it can give you The Ick, writer and director Coralie Fargeat has figured out how to get it onscreen, via creative camera work, noise, suggestion and the welcome use of practical special effects and make-up.

Things go between the comically disgusting, to paper-cut wince, to blood-by-the-gallon slapstick, to disturbing, cruel violence seamlessly. It’s like someone cut the explosive gluttony of Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life next to the most sinister parts of The Shining, with nods to The Human Centipede, Carrie, An American Werewolf In London, Misery, sickening French food freak-out La Grande Bouffe and (no, really) The Nutty Professor thrown in. It’s as wild and off-the-chain as that sounds.

The physical trauma (hope you like needles…) is leg-crossing stuff. The crumbling of beauty comes in the form of tiny owees that are actually more unpleasant to watch than the grotesque, black-humoured climax. Shaky-cam during scenes of panic are brilliantly sickening, while the heavy use of ASMR and fast cut will itch at your brain. The music, meanwhile, is often disorientingly glitchy.

This mastery of filmcraft makes you fall (shallowly) in love with Sue and feel ever more terrible for the broken Elisabeth. As the man causing all the self-doubt, it also highlights quite how mediocre Harvey is. Like 1984’s Two Minutes’ Hate, every time he appears – noisily slurping his way through a stack of buttery shrimp while talking with his mouth full, being a personal space invader, not washing his hands after taking an obnoxious, noisy, prostate-y piss, smoking all over people – you want to jump through the screen and throttle him.

Dennis Quaid is clearly having a ball as such a extrovertly repugnant piece of shit. But it’s Demi Moore who makes it. It’s a low hanging point that the story is an appropriate parable for a 61-year-old actress who’s felt the sharp end of fame’s sexist beauty standards, but one made well. Particularly as she gives one of the most thunderingly brilliant performances of her career here.

Whether it’s her growing frustrations, turning into a comical crone, preparing food that makes you feel greasy and sick just looking at it, or harrowingly destroying herself in the mirror, convinced she’s not good enough for a date, she’s incredible. Even more impressive when so much of her screen time is spent alone. Some have criticised the abundance of nudity in the (intentionally) sparse bathroom in which she spends so much time. These people didn’t understand the point of the raw vulnerability Demi has praised the movie for. Their loss.

It could do with a bit of pruning in length, but this is a minor quibble. As a critique of obsession with beauty, The Substance is about as subtle as its most knowingly vile segments. As a cautionary tale about the folly of quick fixes for unhappiness, it’s thought-provoking. And as a reminder of loss as an inevitability that it’s often best to grasp, however unappealing in the moment, it’s poignant.

The ‘if you met your doppelgänger you’d attack them’ bit has long been a favourite of sci-fi and horror. Here, it’s served up with an appropriately equal balance of raw emotion, fantastic gore, wit, sadness, hideous violence, cutting irony, funny bits, horniness, self-loathing, disgust and power. You’ll leave feeling both weirdly elated and completely nauseous.

Verdict: 4/5

The Substance is in cinemas now