The Substance: Beauty Is Pain (And Blood, And Guts)

Every few months, TikTokers find a new way to express contempt for aging women. For a while this took the form of women asking how old they looked, with comments either praising them for appearing younger than they actually are (“drop the skincare routine, queen!”) or mocking them for having visible wrinkles, sunspots, and gray hairs. Now there’s the aging filter that’s used as a jumpscare, reaffirming the aesthetics of girlhood and coquette that put youth on a pedestal. It’s nothing new, but it’s amplified on the endless scroll of social media that places age in a moral binary: young is good, old is bad.

In The Substance, French director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat puts this false binary on blast. Demi Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, the host of a popular aerobics show who’s facing down the barrel of her 50th birthday. Her boss Harvey (a total boor who Dennis Quaid plays to a T) wants to replace her with someone young and hot, so when Elisabeth learns about the eponymous substance that can create a younger, hotter version of herself, she jumps at the chance. 

Fargeat draws us into Elisabeth’s world with a visual aesthetic similar to her 2017 debut Revenge. Everything is big and bright and high-contrast, from the larger-than-life poster of Elisabeth in her penthouse apartment to the soundstage where she films her aerobics class in neon outfits. The movie feels slightly outside of time, not tied to a distinct year or decade, and cinematographer Benjamin Kracun adds a technicolor sheen that calls to mind the Los Angeles of La La Land and Barbie. 

Unlike those movies, though, The Substance also shows the dark underbelly to the sparkle of Hollywood. Before activating the Substance for the first time, Elisabeth stares at her body in the bathroom mirror with obvious disdain, spinning around for close-up shots of cellulite, stretch marks and sagging. When she injects herself with the Substance and her new self (played by Margaret Qualley) literally crawls out of her old skin, the mirror reflects smooth and bouncy skin and a self-satisfied smile on the new Elisabeth’s face. Implied is that binary: young/old, good/bad.

Elisabeth’s new self, dubbed Sue, takes the replacement role on Elisabeth’s show and skyrockets to stardom, but the Substance requires Sue and Elisabeth to trade off every seven days. For her part, Qualley perfectly plays the spoiled beauty, gliding her way to fame by batting her eyelashes and growing increasingly unhinged when she doesn’t get her way. And Moore is riveting on screen. Whether Elisabeth is ripping her body apart to clutch at a last gasp of fame or sinking into self-loathing, Moore puts us so close to her pain it’s impossible not to empathize.

Unfortunately, Fargeat establishes the fault lines too early and takes too long to build up tension. We’re immersed in the seven-day cycle for an unending number of scenes as Sue dances and parties and stares lovingly at her young body and Elisabeth isolates herself from the public eye, binging on food and cable TV. The plot lingers on that cycle of Elisabeth and Sue’s time in their bodies, and although it’s no hardship to watch Moore and Qualley, the middle of the movie drags. It’s only when Sue, resentful of Elisabeth’s sloth and gluttony, begins to steal more and more time away that the movie picks up speed again.

Drawing out the tension between Sue and Elisabeth might cause The Substance to lose steam, but a balls-to-the-wall finale almost makes the length worth it. The final 20 minutes of the movie take that inescapable fear of aging and blow it up in all its goopy, saggy glory. There’s blood and guts and Cronenberg-worthy eldritch horrors that bring The Substance to its final, satirical point: aging comes for us all, and the search for outer beauty only leads to inner turmoil. 

The Substance’s smart concoction of social satire and horror is a breath of fresh air in both genres. Scary movies have always had a fixation on the bodies of old women, with grannies and elderly witches serving as jumpscares in everything from Suspiria to Barbarian. Fargeat spins this trope on its head, making Elisabeth’s aging body an object of sympathy, not scares, until her pursuit of youth mutates her beyond recognition. And the audience is trusted to read between the lines—there’s no unnecessary exposition shoving the thesis down your throat. 

With The Substance, Fargeat goes beyond surface-level depictions of double standards and female rage to not only show flawed, complex women, but also the social conditions shaping their everyday lives. That this incisive commentary comes with a healthy serving of body horror and two killer performances makes it one for the ages.

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