The Substance

The Substance

Writer & Director ~ Coralie Fargeat

2024, UK-France

Stars ~ Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid

 

(This first section is a reprint of my original FrightFest review.)

 

Broad of satire, unconvincing of detail, full of glorious excess, ‘The Substance’ is an EC Comic horror full of crowd-pleasing absurdity – an extended ‘Creepshow’ tale. If I went in perhaps expecting Cronenberg-lite, in fact the callbacks were to ‘Society’, ‘Basket Case’ and even ‘TerrorVision’, the early films of Stuart Gordon; those grungy, silly, outrageousness, flabbergasting films that were the Eighties output of Empire Pictures and Troma. Surely Cannes can’t be as familiar with this output as the FrightFest audience and had never quite seen something like ‘The Substance’, therefore giving it awards.

 

My friend called it “Gore Barbie” and that seems to me a thoroughly succinct summary.

 

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley look gorgeous and give it their all, and there is much amusement in the battle between youth and aging here, even if it never addresses the subjects of narcissism. The film’s call for kindness to yourself across the ages is a sincerely felt one, although the audience was baying with laughter at the inter-generational fight made flesh. Also, despite how much the film insists, they never feel like the same person, as “one”. It is as brilliant as it is stupid.

 

The opening vignette that establishes Elizabeth Sparkle’s (Moore) waning fame is excellent, the constant unsubtlety less so (we get it: Dennis Quaid is gross). Internal logic and answering questions are not really in its interest (how could “Sue” (Qualley) possibly function as a huge star on magazine covers without history? Does she get an audition, accepted and film a show in a week? She taps a hollow wall and finds an empty room behind? Wait, who is behind “The Substance”, what is their agenda and what do they gain?).

 

But the comic book look, the art design, the practical effects are where ‘The Substance’ excels, pushing itself right to the end into a “fuck it” splatterfest until using out-there gore to return us to the beginning with an astute ending whose unsubtlety works. The FrightFest audience rightly treated the whole thing as a comedy with a little grit, stupidity and feminine anger, and for that it is a giddy body horror that wins by taking the lead of the body horror that came before. And of course, you get a callback to ‘The Shining’ carpet as well.

 

    But...

 

My friend called it ‘Gore Barbie’* and that seems to me a thoroughly succinct summary. And like the similar phenomenon of ‘Barbie’ it is similarly colourful but unsubtle. ‘Barbie’ had its Girl Power on its pink plastic tiara, had fun at the expense of the bros, but it didn’t really offer anything progressive, nothing challenging a binary us-or-them way of imagining gender; and then it descended into the tiresome sentimental mainstreaming sermonising that undermines the satire. Even so, there was a few subtle gags beneath the garish veneer and gleefully provoked misogynists, so all to the good. Alternatively, I sat through ‘The Substance’ just waiting for a nuance, but none came. Rather, its cartoonery and absurdism and body horror kept dragging me in and batting away my reservations.

 

But I balked at the news that it won Best Screenplay at Cannes. I mean, it is a lot of fun and it is bookended by two satisfying Hollywood Star moments, but if screenplays are to be celebrated for dialogue, structure, layers of meaning, execution and refinement of theme, how can ‘The Substance’ win? ‘Red Rooms’, ‘Anatomy of a Fall’, ‘Burning’ are all at the top of my list of recent screenplays, but if we are to look at genre, ‘The Demon Disorder’ may be the lesser body horror – centred on men this time – but it does have characters. ‘The Substance’ doesn’t have characters but caricatures. Horror is full of Final Girl fury and has been for a while, and films like ‘A Wounded Fawn’ or ‘Piggy’ and ‘Pearl’ offer WTF factors, the last especially hinged on the psychopathy of ambition. ‘The Substance’s failing is that although it is about the internal conflict between ages in the same body, there is no real sense of who Elizabeth Sparkle is, and if Sue is anything to go by, she’s selfish and vain. It’s a fantasy context that doesn’t give her shade: there’s a sense that however topical its feminist outrage is, it’s not very of the zeitgeist. No overwhelming fans, no social media, she’s a TV fitness star which feels a little retro, no huge business infrastructure. The realisation is that this superficiality is the secret to ‘The Substance’s success, in that it contains nothing troubling. It doesn’t have the sadness of the pop-coloured ‘Promising Young Woman’, or the distress of Brea Grants’ ‘Lucky’, or the insidiousness chill of ‘The Assistant’. Or indeed the heartbreaking desperation of the ‘Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities’ episode ‘The Outside’. Indeed, that’s surely how such an extreme body horror is in the mainstream. It must be a gleeful shock to those unfamiliar with the genre and a riot for fans.

 

‘The Substance’ succeeds as an outrageous visual feast and absurdity, not on angles and layers. There’s a sloppiness that seems unnecessary and undermining when so much else is thoroughly entertaining and a little transgressive – it was the same with Fargeat’s previous ‘Revenge’. If you’re someone who likes to stick a fork in and turn it over to see what’s on the other side, ‘The Substance’ is a little undercooked, but it is a triumph of gusto over thematic nuance. As a horror comedy in the Henenlotter style, it’s a scream, and where Fargeat has made it to your local multiplex, that’s a singular achievement. Never thought I would see the day.  

 

 

 

* Thanks, Nata!