The Substance is a grotesque takedown of our obsession with youth

As overmuch arsenic studios emotion hyping up their latest scary movies arsenic being truthful terrifying that they traumatize audiences, it is uncommon for features to unrecorded up to that benignant of buzz. But The Substance writer / manager Coralie Fargeat’s caller assemblage fearfulness is infinitely much disturbing (a feature, not a bug) than immoderate of its aboriginal trailers person fto on. 

Films astir the agony of surviving up to pistillate quality standards aren’t new, but The Substance weaves them into an incisive feminist parable that feels jacked straight into the infinitesimal that has fixed america on-demand Ozempic and Brat. And what the movie lacks successful subtlety, it makes up for with an inspired — if stomach-turning — communicative that’s meant to get each the mode nether your tegument nary substance however unafraid successful your assemblage you mightiness feel.

After years of hosting her fashionable aerobics TV show, fittingness icon Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has astir everything she’s ever dreamed of. She’s wealthy, famous, and her look is plastered each implicit Los Angeles, wherever her sanction has go synonymous with the overt sexiness of her long-running series. On the time Elisabeth turns 50, though, her piggish brag Harvey (Dennis Quaid) informs her that her clip with the workplace is coming to an end. He insists that Elisabeth’s dismissal is conscionable a effect of viewers’ changing tastes successful programming, but she knows that it’s her age.

Elisabeth understands how, particularly successful amusement business, women tin go personae non grata the infinitesimal men successful powerfulness determine they’re nary longer physically desirable. And the world that she’s being sunsetted alarms Elisabeth truthful overmuch that she hardly thinks doubly erstwhile presented with the accidental to effort a mysterious cause that promises to alteration her into a “younger, much beautiful, much perfect” mentation of herself. The Substance works, and Elisabeth gives a twisted benignant of commencement to Sue (Margaret Qualley) — a gorgeous 20-something whose looks nonstop men into cartoonish fits. But arsenic blessed arsenic Elisabeth initially is with her concealed treble life, she soon finds herself astatine likelihood with Sue arsenic “they” conflict to travel the strict rules astir however The Substance is expected to beryllium used.

It doesn’t instrumentality galore licks to get done The Substance’s glossy candy coating down to its almighty messages astir the ways nine pushes women to aspire and conform to unrealistic ideas of femininity. The Substance repeatedly explains that Elisabeth and Sue are the aforesaid idiosyncratic and indispensable alternate betwixt carnal forms for a week astatine a clip successful bid to stay stable. The conceit itself is an effectual metaphor for the mode that our youth-obsessed civilization drives radical to drastically change themselves with drugs, cosmetic surgeries, and utmost manner changes that each travel with immoderate grade of risk.

It’s excruciating to ticker The Substance’s visceral shots of tegument being ripped isolated and bodily fluids being drained done twisted tubing. But arsenic Sue steps retired into the world, Fargeat presents it arsenic an intoxicating wonderland of enactment and powerfulness intoxicating capable to marque the symptom of her translation worthy it. Though The Substance features a fistful of different characters, Moore and Qualley bid the movie with dueling performances. Together, they overgarment a analyzable representation of a pistillate astatine warfare with herself for power of a beingness that they’re some liable for but person drastically antithetic experiences of. 

Moore brings a hopeless weariness to Elisabeth, whose presumption arsenic a spandex-wearing fittingness icon reads arsenic a motion to the actor’s emergence to fame successful the aboriginal ’80s. And there’s a sociopathic prime to the mode Qualley inhabits Sue arsenic a pistillate simply playing astatine being a guileless “girl adjacent door” benignant to befuddle boorish men. As the cause continues to unfastened much and much doors for Sue that were erstwhile closed to Elisabeth, The Substance begins to echo galore of the beats that shaped All About Eve while channeling a acheronian eroticism evocative of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. But arsenic Elisabeth and Sue’s combat for much power implicit their beingness becomes much pointed, the movie drives head-on into territory reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Crash and Crimes of the Future, which Fargeat makes her ain with buckets of artfully splattered viscera. 

While there’s a pronounced drama streak moving done it, The Substance is not astatine each a movie for the squeamish. Many of its astir stunning scenes are soaked successful humor spurting from unnatural orifices and bodies becoming warped successful nightmarish ways. They’re spectacularly nauseating. Fargeat wants you to consciousness the phantasy and witnesser the suffering that comes with trying to support it. The Substance mightiness precise good permission you feeling sick and a small woozy, but that’s however you cognize it’s working.

The Substance also stars Hugo Diego Garcia, Philip Schurer, Joseph Balderrama, Tom Morton, and Robin Greer. The movie hits theaters connected September 20th.