REVIEW: “The Substance” Takes Female Aging/Beauty Standards to the Body Horror Woodshed

by Jacob Jones

Horror, as a genre, has somewhat defined 2024 as a movie year. It seems every month some new thriller has come along, and every other week some new trailer drops for an upcoming horror film due to be released in a month or so. For all the handwringing people love to do about the lack of original filmmaking being pushed by mainstream Hollywood studios (handwringing from which I’ve not historically been exempt), the horror genre has been pumping out both franchise I.P. and strikingly original work left and right for the better part of a decade now. In fact, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the original poster child for the “elevated horror” canon: Jennifer Kent’s iconic psychological trauma film, The Babadook. (Luckily, in 2024, the term “elevated horror” has gone all but extinct.) In 2024 alone, Abigail, Longlegs, Alien: Romulus, Strange Darling, Cuckoo, Trap, Blink Twice, Immaculate, and MaXXXine all received large-scale theatrical releases, and only two of those films come from pre-existing material. However, while most of these aforementioned works may at least adequately represent 2024’s killer craze, almost none have felt as though they could truly define it, until now.
 
When horror enthusiasts look back on 2024, two films will ultimately stand as the most definitive of the movie year. The first is Longlegs, directed by Osgood Perkins, which drips in atmosphere and soaks in dread until its final images have long seeped into viewers’ collective memories. (A full review is forthcoming.) The other will be director Coralie Fargeat’s searing body horror takedown of beauty standards and female performance expectations, The Substance. The film follows Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, a once-lauded fitness media sensation who becomes increasingly obsolete in the eyes of the company for one very pointed reason: she’s aging out of their preferred business model, and out of collective audience memory. When the sleazy, slimy studio executive in charge (Dennis Quaid) decides to let her go without a second thought in the pursuit of someone “younger and hotter,” Elisabeth takes matters into her own hands, electing to try The Substance, a liquid compound that unlocks the DNA of its user, resulting in a younger, “hotter” of Elisabeth named Sue (Margaret Qualley). The only real catch? Both Elisabeth and Sue can only exist outside of each other for exactly seven days at a time, and must always remember that they are still one entity. As each begins to resent the other, the balance starts to spiral out of control, and Elisabeth/Sue are forced to confront the consequences of resisting the ultimate truth: you can’t escape from yourself.
 
When a movie has as much to say about its themes as The Substance does, it’s typically praised for the ways in which it can do so subtly, without making a big show of what the filmmaker’s thesis is, or being too obvious in its commentary. Not so with this one. In fact, so aggressive is director Coralie Fargeat’s messaging in The Substance that no one would ever mistake its loudness as anything but the very point it’s trying to make. What begins as a mere examination of beauty standards and the burden society places on women to age perfectly rather than gracefully (much less realistically) soon transforms into an all-out rage fit against the very idea of those standards, holding responsible the overtly patriarchal system holding the keys to the kingdom where the decisions get made about what those standards are. It’s an all-out scream, meant to be guttural, inescapable, a bracing attack on the self-loathing that society beats into women from a young age so that it sticks around as they get older that’s as boisterous and gross as the men within the film are allowed to be without a second thought.
 
This very idea is manifest in Demi Moore’s career-best performance, which simmers with a boiling grudge against the very system that makes women stars and then tells them to change everything about themselves in order to stay one. There’s a clear injection of personal experience into the character of Elisabeth from her end, as the character examines herself in the mirror, looking at by any measure an objectively beautiful, normal body, and can only seem to resent its aging process due to what Dennis Quaid’s “Harvey” (in a delightfully skeezy turn by the once venerated actor) and the system around her has beaten into her head. By contrast, her younger self, which Margaret Qualley has a ton of fun playing up to 11, is only resentful of her other body, which she fears and actively attempts to avoid returning to, once more due to the system’s treatment of how women age. The film takes advantage of every opportunity to remind the viewer exactly what it’s trying to say, often in manners even the toughest of body horror fans may find shockingly audacious.
 
Body horror, as a subgenre, is one I admittedly don’t have a lot of experience covering, but work of this quality is simply undeniable even if one has never seen a body horror film in their lifetime. The makeup work alone, were the Academy not practically allergic to the horror genre at this point, would be leading the awards season conversation in any just world. There are sequences featured in this film that make the elevator scene from The Shining look tame by comparison, as grotesque manifestations of female self-hatred are borne out of men’s needs for women to look and stay as perfect as they possibly can because the performances that cater to men’s desires are those that get rewarded. The physical craft of the film, from the makeup to the effects, to the score, to the sound design, is as loud as the themes found within, and yet never misses a step, such is the skill of a writer/director like Fargeat at the helm.
 
Even as the year has gone on, so many horror films have come and gone that have felt as though they simply wouldn’t leave a lasting impact on the genre, despite how fun or well-crafted they’ve been. But when I think about The Substance, when I consider all it has to offer to the body horror subgenre, and the risks it takes in casting off subtlety or gracefulness in favor of something bolder, meaner, more commanding, I’m left with the impression that it genuinely could fundamentally change the subgenre in some ways. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying its sheer power, and that power is something horror fans will be talking about for a long time to come.
 
I’m giving “The Substance” a 9.3/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan