The Substance is a bloody great comeback for Demi Moore

Canadian auteur David Cronenberg is the first name to spring to mind when the term “body horror” is mentioned, but French director Coralie Fargeat might end up redefining the term thanks to her new film The Substance.

The Substance has been touted as a potential comeback and Oscar nomination for Demi Moore, and by the end of the 140-minute runtime Fargeat and Moore make every single effort to make sure you don’t forget the film in a hurry. 

Moore stars as a formerly popular TV aerobics instructor who is told she is simply “too old” and the network wishes to replace her with someone younger.

Moore learns of a mysterious product called The Substance which allows someone to transfer their older self into the body of a younger person.

Through a series of injections and tubes, the user is able to live their lives anew as a younger, better version of themselves.

Every seven days, however, the user must transfer themselves back into their original body.

Of course, there are many strings attached to the process – what, you think it was that easy? – and the film quickly turns into a nightmarish, hilarious blend of a classic Twilight Zone episode and Being John Malkovich.

Fair warning, if you are not a fan of gore, needles or just general nasty body stuff, The Substance will not be the film for you.

The film revels in how depraved and disgusting it gets, but those who can stick it out will be rewarded with a viciously funny one-of-a-kind treat.

The first point of order with The Substance is that the film follows the grand satirical tradition of Paul Verhoeven; turn the subtext into text and hammer the point home until it is etched in the viewer’s brain.

The great Dutch director can direct an action sequence like no one else, but his films also have a jet-black sense of humour running through them along with biting social commentary.

Showgirls is the Verhoeven film that is most baked into The Substance’s DNA, and while that film has divided opinion for nearly 30 years we are pleased to say The Substance is a more successful version of his brand of camp psychodrama.

From the opening scene where a cheeseburger is dropped on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Dennis Quaid’s boorish Hollywood executive outright saying that audiences prefer someone younger, the film is incredibly clear in its message.

One of the great pleasures of The Substance is simply how funny it is. 

It is not hard to see why Demi Moore was drawn to this film and why she put every last drop of energy into the role; it’s a twisted perversion of the Gloria Swanson role in Sunset Boulevard put through the Eurotrash filter.

With the character of Elisabeth Sparkle, Moore is able to channel decades of inner frustration with the Hollywood system into the performance of a lifetime.

Earlier this year, Emma Stone won her second Oscar for Poor Things, a film which we lavished with praise and hailed Stone’s performance as “daring and bold.”

The Substance goes further than Poor Things ever did in terms of sheer out-there dementedness.

Poor Things won four Oscars earlier this year despite being madder than a box of frogs; there is precedent for body-themed comedies from European auteurs doing well during awards season is all we are going to say.

Moore gives a similarly, if not even more dedicated performance than Stone.

If Stone throws the kitchen sink at the wall in Poor Things, Moore throws the entire contents of the drawers, fridge and press at the wall in The Substance.

Moore hands her ego and vanity over to Fargreat and the French auteur rewards her beyond her wildest dreams.

There is righteous anger, a “how dare they forget about me” quality to Moore’s performance, and it is liberating to see one of the great movie stars of the last half-century go for broke like this.

Moore is matched in her gutsy performance by Margaret Qualley, an emerging star in her own right.

Qualley, daughter of Moore’s contemporary Andie MacDowell, has built an interesting CV ever since breaking out in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood back in 2019.

Projects like Poor Things, Kinds Of Kindness and Drive-Away Dolls point to her being willing to give herself over to an auteur and her instincts have served her right here.

Qualley is pitch-perfect as Sue, who is the avatar for Moore’s character who wants to turn back the clock.

Qualley has the hot young thing shtick down to a fine art and is very reminiscent of Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive in parts, the young star who finds herself corrupted by Hollywood archetype.

Both Moore and Qualley end up performing something of a symbotic dance with each other both within the film and on a metatextual level.

Neither can fully operate without the other, and a rivalry starts to build between the two in a Joan Crawford/Bette Davis way.

In the early 1990s, British dance act The KLF performed an extreme metal version of 3AM Eternal at the Brit Awards, with the performance culminating in the lead singer, dressed in a trench coat, firing machine gun blanks into a crowd of industry luminaries before announcing their retirement from the music industry.

For that one moment in time, it seemed like the counterculture had bled into the mainstream and The Substance feels like a film that was unleashed onto the world as opposed to released.

The Substance has that quality – a sense of you aren’t supposed to be seeing this film.

It is refreshing to see a film that flies in the face of genre conventions yet still manages to pay its respects to what has come before.

The Substance is a singular film in many ways, but it also follows in the footsteps of giants.

David Cronenberg was mentioned at the top of this review and his influence looms large over the film.

The Canadian auteur wrote the rulebook on how body horror can be portrayed on screen, and while his output isn’t as prolific as it used to be we have no doubt he will cheering on his film as if it were his own flesh and blood.

The Substance also pays tribute to the likes of David Lynch, Clive Barker, Brian De Palma and even the cult 1989 splatterfest Society over the course of its runtime.

While the film starts out as something of a riff on Mulholland Drive – horrible Hollywood steals your soul and turns you into a husk – the end of the film goes off in directions you couldn’t possibly expect.

The film won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes earlier this year and was picked up for distribution by Mubi, the best streaming service you haven’t heard of.

Over the last few years, Mubi has built up a catalogue of tremendous films such as Perfect Days, The Worst Person In The World, Annette, Decision To Leave and Aftersun, and The Substance is their stab at making a name for themselves as the safe haven for risky, non-commercial films.

In this era of bloated superhero nonsense and multiverses, we will sing the praises of any distributor that will spend the money and resources to make sure a barmy film like this gets shown on cinema screens.

People who complain about nothing but sequels and franchises being shown on cinema screens forfeit their right to complain when they don’t support films like The Substance with their wallets.

The Substance might end up being too out-there and radical for mainstream audiences, but what the hell do they know?

If we went by the wisdom of crowds you’d be led to believe that Ryan Reynolds is the modern Cary Grant and that The Lighthouse Family were the greatest pop act of the 1990s.

Sometimes, you have to go off the beaten path to find gold; at the end of the path, you will find a film like The Substance.