Demi Moore performs in one of the year’s best onscreen casting choices as Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance.Christine Tamalet/MUBI
The Substance
Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid
Classification 18A, 140 minutes
Opens in select theatres Sept. 20
Critic’s Pick
Deranged, demented, unhinged – these are the words that come to mind when trying to explain the mind that made The Substance. For genre fans, of course, these descriptors are offered in only the most complimentary of ways, and French body horror auteur Coralie Fargeat seems only happy to continue making films that delight their intended audiences in just this way.
Her second feature after the 2017 thriller Revenge, The Substance doubles down on the director’s vision for blood-soaked, colour-saturated, bass-boosted genre fun. In one of the year’s best onscreen casting choices, Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a beautiful, Oscar-winning actress and Jane Fonda-esque video aerobics star who is unceremoniously fired by her misogynistic boss on her 50th birthday.
Spiralling into her feelings of self-hatred and defeat, Elisabeth happens upon a black-market serum called “The Substance,” which promises its user a younger, more beautiful version of themselves. And so begins the film’s delirious descent into the Freudian battle between ego and id, as Elisabeth and her newly formed sorta-clone, Sue (Margaret Qualley), battle for star billing on the main stage of Elisabeth’s life with truly monstrous consequences.
While the film begins as a visually sumptuous but all-too-literal satire of the brutal reality of aging as a woman in a male-led industry, The Substance amps itself up into a frenetic and delightfully silly genre exercise that outdoes itself at each new turn, complete with practical effects and prosthetics work that completely transforms its lead characters, while also showcasing Fargeat’s commitment to craft. While Elisabeth and Sue begin the film at polar opposite ends of the all-too-limited spectrum of female desirability, as far as Hollywood’s concerned, anyhow, the fantastically squelching chimera that the pair evolve into is as enchanting as it is beastly.
While its celebration of all things fleshly, protrusive, and gloriously ectoplasmic may not be for those viewers too faint of heart, Fargeat’s no-holds-barred, wholly beyond your wildest expectations approach with The Substance will leave genre fans kicking their feet up in glee.