These are the kind of words used by the mysterious eponymous corporation at the heart of 2024’s most controversial horror film “The Substance” to describe the product’s effects on their customers. A dangerously underground substance, the drug comes into the attention of recently fired actress Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) who just lost her job as main host of an aerobics program for reaching the age of 50, a deliberate move by the network (manifested by a rather quirky performance by Dennis Quaid playing the unsubtly named “Harvey”) to grab much younger, “hotter” talent. Stuck in an ageist rut, Elisabeth accepts the offer to revitalize her life and career via this drug that gives her the much younger “Sue” persona (Margaret Qualley) to split her time with. Given that they still live as a working female actor in Hollywood of all places, things will not abode well for Elisabeth/Sue.
If any word can describe the tone of “The Substance” well, “extreme” is the only reasonable term allowed that doesn’t start leaning into obscenities. Director/writer Coralie Fargeat’s second major film since 2017’s “Revenge” has gained much attention as one of the major breakout films of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, winning “Best Screenplay” and standing ovations as much as walkouts during its premiere. By design, the maximalist if not operatic scope the film goes for leaves for no alternate interpretations in its gore and butt-soaked satire than simply a damnation of ageist and sexist body standards women deal with as much the addictive nature of male gaze adoration.
Much of the filmmaking is a deliberate subversion of the nature of such patriarchal objectification, bringing the camera as close as possible in slicing up body parts before we even get to the gore as to show Elisabeth’s body dysmorphia under such social standards affecting even the ability to just walk outside. A good example of this in action is the difference between Elizabeth and Sue when out in public. Elizabeth frequently layers of clothing all over her body as opposed to reinforce her own disgust with her age, which we see in detail both in full nude sequences where the camera picks her body apart and as much as the film exaggerates this pain more when more drastic side effects occur in film. Whenever the Sue persona pops up, it’s almost the drugs kicking into your system and the dopamine hit is whenever her youth is on the screen. As sledgehammer blunt as the film is, very few films of late capture such a sense of panic and self-hate such a story like this needs to work in such strong terms.
This film doesn’t any pull punches in a stylistic sense, with much of the film’s negative pushback either leaning towards the film being too blunt with its messaging or being too mean to its lead. That’s not even a criticism I can disagree with myself as the “sledgehammer to the wall for two and a half hours” approach begins to feel somewhat limiting or simplistic to what angles the film can touch. Even then, basic ideas are rammed in such a way that if you don’t like the ride you’re on, it kind of feels like it was designed for children in its clarity of form. Yes, we get the idea of the alienation male objectification brings to women, but the up-close butt camera angles are a bit much here.
But there is a distinct angle on why such an extreme method was done here that clarifies itself by the end. As images of old hags, midnight balls, and princesses straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales come into the limelight, the fable like aspirations comes more into focus. While the inspirations still lean at heart in 70s and 80s genre work, the pure anger of “The Substance’s” filmmaking language cuts backwards in time. The pure distress these artists have brings forth images of femininity used in the past to tell girls of what not to do to deconstruct those simple architypes society has had on women’s self-image.
It’s this absurdist force that led to where I almost began crying tears of joy because I hadn’t seen that many films using the actual moving visual medium to such chaotic ends in something that could be a hit with audiences. In the prosses of making such a throat punch of a film, Coralie Fargeat has created a visual sensibility worthy of comparison of filmmakers like George Miller, the filmmaker behind the “Mad Max” films, in being able to rip traditions in storytelling going back centuries and refined them for a new generation and comment on those tropes with universal visual clarity. In the process, Coralie proves herself arguably as one of the purest visual filmmakers working today in displaying all your worst nightmares and anxieties reflected on a blood-soaked silver platter.
