CW: binge-eating, body image, gore, gender discrimination, disturbing images.

Everything you need to know about French writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s latest film is right there in the title. The Substance: so vague (what actually is this ‘substance’?) yet so precise with the ‘the’. It manages to reflect the film itself, with the razor-sharp incision of its themes – namely, the impossibility of conforming to the male gaze and female beauty standards, which themselves are so imprecise and nebulous. 

On paper, The Substance has a simple concept: the film follows ageing Hollywood starlet, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) who takes a black market drug called ‘The Substance’ that creates a younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley). 

In practice, though, The Substance is a far more complex beast than the simplicity of its premise and title suggest. For one, the public perception of Demi Moore – as a once-inescapable star we have not seen on our screens for some time – is exploited here to the extent that Elisabeth’s character arc might be a trace autobiographical. Moore’s character, upon hitting fifty, is let go by the network she makes fitness videos for, and is forced to reckon with the prospect of becoming a ‘legacy’ star: someone remembered for their past work and expected – nay, required – to retreat from the spotlight to make way for the newest, hottest thing.

The film constantly plays into the idea that age equates to status, love, respect and desirability. When Elisabeth ages, she is dropped by her network; when she takes The Substance and the younger version of her, Sue, appears from nowhere, she is immediately showered with opportunities, praise and stardom. (In fact, while researching for this review, I was recommended a Telegraph article by Annie Murray entitled ‘I’m 54 with a 35-year-old body. It all started because I gave up drinking’ – a headline that ironically reinforces the very standards that The Substance seeks to critique.) As the plot progresses, the viewer learns that both Elisabeth and Sue each have to switch back to the other’s body seven days at a time; when neither party adheres to this rule – Elisabeth has several binge eating episodes (instead of taking from the strict ‘food matrix’ supplied in the Substance kit) while Sue takes more Substance to hook up with a guy – both women experience physical deformities.

The messaging here is clear: as a woman, the conflicting pursuits of pleasure and beauty will ruin you if you don’t do it in exactly the right way. By wanting to enjoy junk food, by wanting to enjoy sex and being young, you will be punished and thrown out by the industry. This all comes to a head in the film’s stellar final sequence, the details of which will not be spoiled here. It is an intriguing, shocking watch that not only cements Fargeat’s film as an instant body-horror classic but also underscores the punishing pursuit of perfection and youth in vivid, blood-red highlighter pen.  

Most fascinating is the film’s exploration of the male gaze and how impossible it is for these women to conform to it – as well as the horror of the sheer fact that they try to anyway. As a cisgender man, I am fully aware that I benefit from the male privilege that Fargeat is rightfully criticising here; more shocking than any of the bloody body-horror sequences is an early scene where Elisabeth’s boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) eats a plate of shrimp. Here, the unconventional shot types and squirm-inducing sound design (both of which are stellar throughout) are dialled to eleven, and Harvey’s gruesome dismantling of his food is – as Moore herself recently put it in an interview – the scariest scene of the film. 

Again, Fargeat’s message here is obvious: men are far more overt in their disgustingness, but society is also far more ready to enable it. When Elisabeth’s features start rapidly aging after Sue misuses The Substance, the film begins to villainise her for just becoming old. She is no longer young, therefore she is no longer valuable to the men of the entertainment industry. Similarly, when Sue notices a lump just below her buttocks, she panics; will the men behind the camera still want her when she doesn’t have a perfect body? (If Fargeat didn’t already make it obvious, the answer is no.) 

Some viewers may question why the film is called The Substance, and not something like ‘Elisabeth’, or ‘Women’s Beauty Standards: The Movie’, or ‘Trigger Warning This Film Contains So Much Blood You Might Be Sick’? The more you consider it, though, the more the film’s title is perfect. In focusing on the materialism, the ‘how’ of Elisabeth’s mission to reclaim her stardom rather than the reasoning or even Elisabeth herself, the title is allegorical of the standards it is criticising. In focusing on appearance & self-improvement – if we discard these women as soon as we deem them no longer physically perfect – we fail the women themselves. Then who will be left to entertain us? 

Verdict: Led by a career-best performance from Demi Moore, The Substance takes a blowtorch to the male gaze and its unreasonable expectations of women – while injecting a shot in the arm of body-horror cinema. 5/5

Read more from Film:

Review: Shaun of the Dead

Review: Joker: Folie à Deux

Review: Starve Acre