‘The Substance’ is a scathing look into the world of beauty standards for women, and how the industry (and men) can hold very drastic opinions of women dependent solely on their looks and age.

The film follows Elisabeth Sparkle a morning TV fitness instructor who, while successful, is not giving the right kind of ‘image’ the network want. While theres nothing at all wrong with Liz, the network believe that the show needs ‘sexing’ up. and that Liz, who’s been doing the show since the 80s and very much keeps that aesthetic in her show. Just isnt the kind of youthful raw energy they want for the show.

On the verge of being let go, Liz begins contemplating her appearence and age deeply, worried that her looks are what give her value in the eyes of her fans and audience. While deep in thought, she ends up in a car crash, and things begin to spiral when one of the doctors who sees her gives her a mysterious pendrive containing an advert for ‘The Substance’ but little other information than it promises to give you ‘the best version of you’

Curious, Liz enquires about it, and a short time later she recieves a key card to a back ally locker where her first supply of ‘The Substance’ is ready for collection. The process is simple. Liz takes an ‘activator’ which causes her body and conciousness to split, creating an idealized version of Liz thats youthful, perky and full of attitude.

However, in exchange, a balance needs to be struck. This new body and persona (christned ‘Sue’) can only stay active for 7 days, and needs daily spinal fluid injections from Liz’s unconcious corpse. After 7 days, Sue needs to transfuse her blood back into Lizs lifeless body to reactivate Liz for 7 days, before the process can repeat again. and they’re VERY keen to stress that 7 day limit. Not even an hour longer than that. when the times up you’ve got to swap, or there will be consiquences.

Well; as you can imagine Sue becomes a smash hit and takes over Lizs role on the morning gym programme, sexing it up and losing all the heart in the process. But Sue begins to become addicted to her new, more active, sexier and interesting life. So much so that she begins neglecting Liz’s body and attempting to extend the time she can stay as Sue BEYOND the 7 days…with horrifying results.

I really quite enjoyed ‘The Substance’ its grounded firmly in the works of Cronenberg and Brian Yuzna but with a VERY modernist take on the body horror subgenre. in some ways to its detriment (in my opinion)

The script is positively SCATHING in places, and that anger over the various beauty standards held towards women, the idea that women can be abused, ignored and simply forgotten purely for their age and looks. the sexist attitudes (both conciously and subconciously) that men have towards women. and even the idea of women being unable to love or make connections due to their feelings about themselves all play a critical part in making this film as interesting as it is.

The pacing is pretty pitch perfect, the act structuring is consistent and solid. I really enjoyed the first 2 acts, though (probably a surprise to regular viewers/readers) I wasnt really won over by the 3rd act, the first 2 acts did such a wonderful job of keeping the twists and turns interesting and mixing subtle and overt tones and messages coming thick and fast. But the 3rd act (while impressive visually) kind of hard left turns into a somewhat surreal and gorier experience that I really wasnt expecting (Mild spoilers: But I personally subscribe to the theory that everything from when Sue retakes ‘The Substance’ onwards is playing out in Sues mind and that she basically just died in liz’s bathroom, as that final 10-15 minutes is WILDLY out of tone with the rest of the film and goes off in strange and unusual ways.)

The characters are all richly developed, with even the shallow characters having distinct layers of slime in their make up. At its core this is a character piece centered around two halves of a broken person slowly falling into loathing with each other when their faults become insufferable to each other. Its a cautionary tale on learning to love yourself for who you are and finding balance between understanding and appreciating aging and finding joy in the things that come with it, while also embracing virility and your inner youth. Learning ultimately to balance those two worlds so that you dont either become a MASSIVE old weirdo, or a MASSIVE old fart in the process.

In fact, one of my only criticisms of this film from a script perspective, is that I think it would have been nice to have seen Sue use the fact she has Liz’s years of experience and memories to manipulate people to do what she wanted. its quite common for young people to be underestimated or seen as manipulatable, and I think, even if it had only been for a couple of scenes. Giving Sue the ability to use her looks and Lizs knowledge to blackmail, intimidate or manipulate her situations could have given us a bit more complexity to the story.

As for the direction, im somewhat polarized. It cant be denied really that on a technical level, the direction is superb, crisp, vivid, colourful, open to experimentation. On that level I absolutely loved it. However, on a personal level. I feel it wasnt quite for me. the main issue I had is simply that a key part of the direction is a strong and sharp polarisation between ultra clean and clinical stylisation, and disgusting filth, blood, guts and gore.

Im not against striking contrasts in direction, in fact, in most cases im supportive of contrasts helping to had shade and depth to what could otherwise be a pretty one note and flat experience. However, the key for me is that those contrasts, like fashion, need to compliment each other. they can be direct opposites, but they need to work together to create a sense of visual coherency. and here, the extremes are SO extreme in places, that I didnt really feel like it worked all that well. the two styles dont compliment each other in my opinion, and whether that was intentional or not. It just made me feel like I was watching 2 different directors at work for most of the first act. with a sense of coherency finally landing about halfway through the second act. at which point things kind of settled in a little bit. But on that front I found it a bit bumpy to start with.

Direction of the cast is superb, no notes. its a decent balance of set/prop work, visual effects and some light improvisation that compliments the darker and more humerous moments well. I also have to give MAJOR props to the production for largely sticking with physical effects over digital ones. that really helped give the film a sense of realism that otherwise would have been lost I fear.

The cine is equally astounding, clean crisp, hyper colourful and apurposfully airbrushed style clashing agaisnt gritty realism to create a wonderful visual experience. My only gripe here really being that they rely a little too heavily on the depth of the frame and in framing things to have equal paralells across the frame breadth which, absolutely added to the more clinical moments of the direction, but felt a bit overused after a while, it would have been nice to have more intimate moments with the cast members and locations, other than these wide, deep set scenes where everyones so distant. I appreciate what they were trying to do with the cine, but the scripting more than sold me on Liz’s Isolationism honestly.

Performance wise, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley were both superb, if I had to favour one. I’d say Moore gets the meatier share of the dialogue and narrative and as such gets more range to work. She’s really astounding in this, probably a career peak for me. and her Oscar nomination and Saturn award were more than earned.

The rest of the cast are all equally fantastic at what they do. I do kind of wish the male cast had had a little bit more depth, but at the same time I totally appreciate why they were kept kind of one note for the purpose of proving a point. They all do great, I had no complaints.

And the soundtrack…It works for this film, I dont feel like it worked for me. I can totally appreciate that a quasi synthy droning roaring score is PERFECT for this kind of movie and really helps set the mood. Im just…SO tired of synth drone soundtracks in sci-fi and horror at this point. I really just want something ANYTHING with actual ‘substance’ behind it…

All in all, while flawed at times, I really enjoyed ‘The Substance’ I can absolutely see why it won the acclaim that it did, and would highly recommend it if you havent already checked it out. Its imperfect, and thats okay.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-substance/