The Substance (18)

Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle has found a new calling as a Jane Fonda-esque home fitness guru in a skin-tight leotard and leg warmers. After taping one show, odious TV executive Harvey cancels her contract, claiming consumers "always demand something new" and that isn't 50-year-old Elisabeth. The crestfallen star is encouraged to try a self-administered medical procedure called The Substance. One injection promises to unlock Elisabeth's DNA and release another version of herself.

LondonNet Film Review

The Substance (18) Film Review from LondonNet

Pretty girls should always smile. So says a leering male TV executive to an ambitious female starlet in Coralie Fargeat’s grisly body horror. His words reflect an unhealthy and unrealistic fascination with youthful beauty in the entertainment industry, which compels some performers to undergo cosmetic procedures to temporarily defy the ageing process and extend their 15 minutes of fame by a few precious seconds. The Substance gleefully satirises this objectification of the female form and unapologetic sexism in the movie business by reshaping the harsh lessons of The Picture Of Dorian Gray as a futuristic feminist parable…

Oscar Wilde’s late 19th-century novella permitted the libertarian title character to sell his soul to remain forever young and hedonistic while his portrait aged and recorded physical signs of his sinfulness and depravity. In Fargeat’s hallucinogenic daydream, Demi Moore’s discarded actress gives birth to a younger self and shares her existence with this mirror image until naked ambition poisons the symbiotic relationship beyond repair. Moore’s tour-de-force central performance energises ferocious scenes and provides emotional glue for the film’s deranged and divisive finale. Admirably, Fargeat doesn’t ease her foot off the accelerator as her picture careens towards its outrageously blood-soaked crescendo, fully justifying warnings from censors about brutal scenes of graphic violence and gore.

Award-winning Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) has found a new calling as a Jane Fonda-esque home fitness guru in a skin-tight leotard and leg warmers. Every week, she encourages viewers to sweat and stretch with her as host of Sparkle Your Life. After taping one show, odious TV exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid) cancels her contract, claiming consumers “always demand something new” and that isn’t 50-year-old Elisabeth. Cast adrift in an industry that venerates unblemished beauty and vigour, Elisabeth is encouraged to try a self-administered medical procedure called The Substance.

One injection of a green activator serum promises to unlock Elisabeth’s DNA and release another version of herself: the younger and perter Sue (Margaret Qualley), who crawls out of Elisabeth’s body then sews up her cracked spine. Elisabeth and Sue must alternate between spending seven days savouring life in Hollywood and lying prostrate on a cold bathroom floor ingesting food through an intravenous tube. They must not deviate from this perfect balance. When Sue selfishly extends her stay, Elisabeth suffers dire repercussions and propagates seeds of resentment towards her other self.

The Substance spares neither characters nor us as Elisabeth’s ill-fated quest for longevity descends into stomach-churning delirium. Moore and Qualley are fearless, both embracing full frontal nudity to explore each unflattering facet of their mirror images. Special makeup effects designer Pierre-Olivier Persin works magic in the second half, which recalls the nauseating excesses of Brian Yuzna’s cult 1989 horror Society. Beauty frolics with beastliness and the play fight turns gorgeously ugly.

– Jo Planter