Last of the Monster Kids

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Saturday, January 25, 2025

OSCARS 2025: The Substance (2024)


(Part of why Oscar season interests me so much is because my personal taste and the Academy's do not cross over very often. I like weirdo cult shit and trashy horror movies, not middle-brow prestige dramas and celebrity biopics. However, this year represents one of the rare cases where a movie specifically on my wavelength has become an award season front-runner. Despite featuring enough spurting blood, gross-out special effects, and warped latex to please any Fangoria reader, "The Substance" is nominated for several big Oscars. Since I watched and reviewed the film recently, I'm unlikely to have any new thoughts on it but, in the name of completion, here's my review of the film from last October once again. Excuse me for recycling.)

If you are willing to dig deep enough, every year is a good year for horror. Thinking more specifically, if you stay in touch with the indie scene and don't judge merely based on what is playing at the multiplexes, you're likely to find lots of fantastic offerings in any given year. However, 2024 has been an especially good year for indie horror at the box office. As I type this, an unrated gore-fest made entirely outside the studio system is hacking up the top ten. NEON and A24 continue to make break-through hits with smart marketing. Most recently, arthouse digital distributor MUBI has proven the power of buzz-worthy genre films at the box office with “The Substance,” which has become a word-of-mouth hit and stuck around in theaters far longer than niche pictures like this usually do. “The Substance” has already been hotly debated but the simple fact remains: People are seeing it and talking about it. I'm a little behind, as usual, but it's my turn to weigh in.

Elizabeth Sparkle was once the toast of Hollywood, with awards and fame to her name. That was a long time ago. Now, she hosts a morning exercise show that is slipping in the ratings. On account of producers desiring a younger star, her show is canceled. Feeling despondent, she receives a tip about a new product called the Substance. She must go to a secluded locker to retrieve the order, a dispassionate voice on the phone informing her of the product's rules. She injects herself and a younger, sexier version emerges from Elizabeth's back. Her original self rendered catatonic, the new and improved model – who takes the name Sue – immediately finds fame and success in Sparkle's old timeslot. The conditions of the Substance dictate that “Sue” must trade places with Elizabeth every other week. Hungry to be loved and adored more, Sue begins to bend the rules... Which immediately has gruesome, horrifying side effects.

“The Substance” comes to us from Coralie Fargeat, previously of “Revenge.” That film aggressively shook up the formula of the rape/revenge premise. Fargeat's latest attacks the systemic issues of youth, vanity, and women being disregarded by the entertainment industry with similar ferocity. The point it makes are not subtle. Shortly after Sparkle's introduction, the grotesque face of a shrieking male exec is shoved into the camera. In a later scene, he's scarfing down on shrimp in the most disgusting manner possible. Later, Fargeat cuts from a close-up of a woman's perfectly shaped buttocks to a less appealing male buttocks. In other words: Women are subjected to beauty standards that men simply don't have to deal with. This ties into other commonly observed points, about how women are judged much more harshly when aging, how women's values are attuned to their appearance, and how Hollywood is obsessed with beauty and abhors ugliness. These points are thrown at us via over-the-top satirical exaggeration. 

No, “The Substance” isn't subtle. However, Fargeat's film isn't merely taking potshots at the obvious inequalities we are all very aware of in Hollywood. Instead, this is a far more personal story about self-hatred. Sparkles – played by a fearless Demi Moore – obsesses over her own image as much as the industry does. She stares at her own body in the mirror. After getting a date with an old high school body, she smears her face with make-up over and over again before staying inside. After Sue – Margauret Qualey, a vision – emerges, Elizabeth begins to judge herself harsher than before. She sinks into self-destruction, resenting her better looking half. This is despite the mysterious voice on the phone assuring her that Sparkles and Sue are one. They are same person. However, Sparkles inability to love herself – an internalizing of Hollywood' brutal beauty standards – is ultimately what pushes her to more extreme actions. “The Substance” is an indictment of Hollywood's treatment of women but it explores that theme through the the more personal lens of self-hatred. 

Whatever criticism you can leverage at “The Substance's” lack of subtly, you can't deny that the film embraces it. Benajamin Kracun's cinematography is highly stylized. It switches between extreme close-ups and the characters standing in the distance amid the highly stylized sets. Gliding camerawork carries one scene into another, often paired with Raffertie's aggressive electronic dance score. That lends a propulsive effect to many of the sequences, often centering around Qualley's expertly sculpted gluteus maximus as she writhes and bounces about many scenes. As “The Substance” grows more grotesque, this directorial style begins to feel like a hammer to the head. Every gross-out hits with maximum strength between the carefully constructed editing and often unrelenting visuals. By the blood and pus filled finale, “The Substance” makes you feel properly assaulted, feeling like one hell of an experience. 

The fact that “The Substance” has crossed over to some degree of mainstream success is what surprises me the most. This movie is, ya know, pretty fucked-up. It attacks the body horror element with the same over-the-top vigor that is approaches its satire with. This results in one shockingly gross sequence after another. Notably images like multiple eyeballs swishing around inside one socket or a tumor appearing on an ass cheek is the movie only getting started. The emergence of a turkey leg seemed to be the nastiest scene... Until “The Substance” kicks further into gear in its second half, throwing one misshapen body part after another at us. By the finale, the film is reaching levels of spurting fluids and malformed flesh that would put a Troma movie to shame. It's over-the-top, vile, disgusting, and holy shit did I love it. That a movie can still make me wince is a sign that I appreciate it. 

Since the Discourse moves so quickly these days, a certain contingency has already decided that “The Substance” is overrated. Or that it's secretly sexist or that it's not feminist in the right ways. All the tiring ways the discussion of cinema has been reduced down to tweets and buzz words these days. That the movie might end up being an awards season contender – improbable as that seems to me, stranger things have happened – means we are only in the beginning of the great debate around “The Substance.” Whatever the consensus ends up being, it's safe to say I loved this one. Gross, endlessly stylized, very European, and a ride from beginning to end, “The Substance” certainly won't be a film I forget any time soon. [9/10]

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