Activate only once. Stabilize every day. Switch every seven days, without exception. The one and only thing not to forget: you are one. You can’t escape from yourself.
These are the instructions given to Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) in “The Substance,” the latest film from writer-director Coralie Fargeat. The French filmmaker burst onto the scene with her 2017 debut “Revenge,” a mean and bloody shotgun blast of a rape-revenge thriller that took film festivals by storm.
Making a bigger and better follow up to “Revenge” is a tall order. But for Fargeat, it doesn’t really matter that her sophomore feature is even more blatantly unsubtle and not quite as blisteringly concise.“The Substance” is bar none the most extreme and genuinely nauseating facemelter of a body horror film of this year, and a film that you will need to see to believe.
In a dateless Hollywood, Elizabeth Sparkle, a former ‘80s star and host of the hit aerobics show “Sparkle Your Life,” has just entered her 50s. For the turgid channel executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid), it means the twilight of her career.
Elizabeth, in her desperation to not fade from the spotlight, takes a mysterious offer with a promise of life-changing renewal: The Substance, a bright green serum that creates a youthful, “perfect” version of oneself. Sue (Margaret Qualley) is born, and a lustful, hateful battle for balance ensues.
I’d say that I want to reveal as little of the plot as possible, but at a certain point, I wouldn’t even know how to begin trying. In an age where audiences will seemingly call any movie with some gnarly and creative gore one of the most insane things they’ve ever seen, “The Substance” goes so much farther with its premise. Just when you think that things couldn’t possibly get any crazier, Fargeat continues to escalate the film’s insanity right up to its final frames.
None of its shocks are without purpose, though. “The Substance” barrels through ideas of feminine beauty standards and self worth and, like “Revenge,” shatters the ceilings of multiple genres in the process. Fargeat, who won the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, couldn’t be more thematically obvious here. But the overstimulating force that she wields for the entire 140-minute runtime is simply thrilling and stupefying.
Her cinematic influences are just as plainly on display too. Making comparisons between a surreal body horror film and the works of David Cronenberg and David Lynch is often tired, but Fargeat solidly earns them here. Her remixing of images and narrative threads through her own distinct and female lens is incredibly effective.
The world of “The Substance” is visually rendered through cold, sterile environments and heightened by a bright, vivid digital sheen. Under the towering palm trees and garish sunlight of Los Angeles, cinematographer Benjamin Kracun captures a glaringly unnatural artifice in the surprisingly sparse number of sets used in the film. And for the images from the television shows that dominate the characters’ screens, it’s even more unsettling and hyperreal.
Moore and Qualley are perfect in their command of these spaces. The physical prowess they exude, both to scenes where they’re nude or under some truly Oscar-worthy makeup effects, is nothing short of brilliant. As two very different halves of one character who rarely share the screen, there’s still a fully believable dynamic between them. Their respective descents into madness as they carry the film to surprisingly emotional and tender places is marvelous to watch.
“The Substance” may not be a perfect movie, but it’s rare to see a vision this bold realized on screen. There’s no way of knowing whether Fargeat will be able to top the deranged bar she has set here, but she has cemented herself as a singularly unhinged voice that I cannot wait to see more of.
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