EIFF 2024 Review: The Substance – “A remarkable, highly unusual, full-throttle, OTT but in the best way horror”

Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

This was another of the revived Midnight Madness strand of late-night flicks at the Edinburgh Film Festival this August, arriving with quite a reputation ahead of it, partly from the reputation director Coralie Fargeat garnered with her previous film (Revenge) and the win at Cannes (The Substance won Best Screenplay), partly from having such a major Hollywood star as Demi Moore tackling this kind of film. And yes, it is a doozy! Loud and very much not subtle about some of the points it is hammering in, and yes, Fargeat’s love for the likes of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg is very, very much on show here.

The premise is fairly simple at first, and deals with an all-too-real subject (in contrast with the film’s more fantastical elements): the way the media, especially in Tinsel Town, chews up talent, especially women, creating stars, but only as long as they remain beautiful, young – perfect. When that idealised version on the screen can’t quite be achieved anymore (wrinkles, grey hairs, how dare a star – especially a female star – dare to grow old, grow imperfect). Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has been at the top of her game for years, and her morning workout show is a huge hit. But now she’s getting older, and this is a kind of show that doesn’t really sell exercise and healthy living, it sells a sanitised, idealised, and unattainable version of perfection. They don’t call it the Dream Factory for nothing…

Check out all of our EIFF coverageLet go from her previously huge show, Elisabeth is furious, and her treatment by Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the incredibly sleazy, amoral boss just increases the sting. On a downward spiral, she gets involved in an accident, and it is at the ER for treatment that an incredibly handsome young doctor tells her she is a “good candidate”, slipping something into her pocket. This turns out to be a USB drive with a phone number and a handwritten note saying “It changed my life”. When she finally feels driven to try this, she has to follow mysterious instructions which take her to an unusual location, where a package is waiting for her, and the promise of a better, more perfect version of her being attainable.

I don’t want to go too much further into the narrative here, because this is a film that is best experienced knowing only the bare bones of the desire that pushes this story. That’s how I went into it, knowing it was something to do with a big star hitting her 50s, finding she’s no longer seen as desirable, and that there was some mysterious method to recapture or recreate her more youthful glory (Moore herself said this was one of the reasons she agreed to the film because she’s had first-hand experience of this very common, not to mention sexist and ageist, problem). But there were so many ways I could imagine that idea being developed – is it a serum? The kind with a price? Is it illegal cloning of some sort? Genetic manipulation? Magical elixir like Death Becomes Her?

Well, again, I’m not saying, except to note that it unfolded in a manner I really wasn’t expecting. A method that was visceral and disgusting and gruesome (oh, the things we do for youth and beauty and fame!), far more so than I had anticipated. In fact I’d say some scenes in The Substance are up there with the disturbing yet compelling body horror of earlier Cronenberg, or The Thing-era Carpenter.

This is not a subtle film – right from the start it really makes its points in a heavy manner, from the time-lapse of Sparkle’s star being created on the iconic Walk of Fame, photographed, admired, slowly forgotten as years pass, to those giant L.A. Billboards (including one right outside the window of Sparkle’s apartment), or flashing up the heavy, block lettering of the instructions on each stage of her package being flashed up massively on the screen, all to pounding, thumping music (the soundscape is as relentless as the visuals). It doesn’t just make a point, it hammers the viewer over the head with it, repeatedly, aurally and visually.

I’m really in two minds about that approach – one part of me really admires and enjoyed it, and loved Fargeat for such an all-out, no-holds-barred, fearless approach, while at the same time there were moments where I found myself too much, too often. Which is it, ultimately? Both, I think! Yes, sorry, that is a bit of a cop-out, but it really did leave me impressed and taken aback but at the same time feeling battered and bruised by its relentless, OTT approach too. Although set in the present (judging by the tech, like the phones), the visual flair and style really put me far more in mind of that pumped-up 1980s vibe (think Jane Fonda’s workout era), and as with the intense, almost breathless approach, I suspect that too was deliberate, being a decade remarkable for excess and that “be all you can be” ethos taken to the max, not to mention when Moore herself was first starting her rise to fame.

Moore and Qualley give their all, even when it comes to scenes involving a lot of practical effects and make-up (all credit to them, I mean they really go the distance and then some with this -you’ll see what I mean if you watch it!), while Quaid seems to be revelling in playing an absolute sleaze bag of a Hollywood suit, cocksure, leering at the female talent (as long as they are still young and perfect), seeing them just as something to use, consume, mould, discard and onto the Next Big Star when the first crow’s feet appear, disgusting in his habits. Everything here isn’t just dialled up to 11, it goes far beyond.

As I said, it both wore me out with this relentless visual and aural assault, and at the same time it impressed the hell out of me, the way it took a real-world problem and blew it into all sorts of new shapes (often disgusting shapes!), with some incredible and frequently stomach-churning visuals and effects (and I say this as someone who loves The Thing and Society and the Cronenberg oeuvre). A remarkable, highly unusual, full-throttle, OTT but in the best way horror that has to be experienced.

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