Review by Grace Winburne
Our obsession with youth and beauty culture becomes the perfect playground for body horror. One part Picture of Dorian Gray, and one part Frankenstein, The Substance is a gory and gorgeous mess with its foot on the gas. It is the sickness and the cure all in one single-use shot.
Elisabeth Sparkle, a famous Hollywood celebrity, smartly played by Demi Moore, has become a household name as a home fitness personality, cheering on stay-at-home moms, and young, impressionable women everywhere that if you move like this, step like that, you too can look like her! Elisabeth is cruelly fired from the network on her fiftieth birthday, as apparently fifty is a woman’s expiration date. What happens to Elisabeth when the career she sacrificed everything for, and the industry that gave her everything she’s ever wanted decides there’s no place for her? What will she do when it’s all taken away?
Enter the Substance. “Have you ever dreamt of a better you?” a cold, unaffected voice asks from her television set. From my seat, I quietly replied, yes. “You. But better,” the voice continues and the injectable infomercial gives Elisabeth all she needs for a second chance at life. These simple instructions for this product come with a warning, “you are one…respect the balance,” fairly straightforward, with seemingly little consequences. All warnings aside, Elisabeth tries the Substance. Just like Athena sprang from Zeus, Elisabeth gives “birth” to Sue. Sue is everything that Elisabeth once was, young, beautiful, skinny, perfect. Sue is Elisabeth, and Elisabeth is Sue. Sue will take over; she will become the new and improved Elisabeth Sparkle, even though she is Elisabeth Sparkle. The two must share this new existence because one couldn’t exist without the other. But neither “one” can respect the other’s “existence”, feeling equally entitled to life. Sue gets to enjoy all the glamor and fun that comes with her celebrity status. While Elisabeth isolates herself from the outside world, only venturing out of her apartment for more substance. Boundaries are pushed to the extreme when Sue refuses to follow the schedule, permanently disfiguring Elisabeth as a result. Motherhood certainly isn’t easy.
I felt almost overwhelmed by the story, with all its flash and guts, and I essentially white-knuckled my way through the film as it surged ahead. I was hurt deeply by the disrespectful and violent treatment of Elisabeth’s body, as it is nipped, stitched, slapped, and injected into submission. I was angry with the degrading treatment of Sue’s body as it is objectified into oblivion. And I was defensive of the cruel treatment of Monstro Elisasue, whose very existence is meant a shocking joke, but she represents the total of all our insecurities. It’s difficult to watch the hatred and disrespect with which we as a youth-obsessed culture, treat age and aging. Our society values youth and beauty and equates youthfulness and beauty to goodness. Things like wrinkles, loose skin, and thinning hair, all natural effects of aging become a problem to fix, an outward indicator of your failure as a woman, and a direct reflection of your goodness as a person.
The Substance is what happens when our body dysmorphia, self-esteem, and self-worth all meet in the bathroom mirror and fight for dominance. This film hits high note after high note, topping every climax with another punchy and bloody climax, it was like a shot of adrenaline right to my heart and self-esteem. As I left the theatre, absolutely rabid, completely radicalized by what I had just seen, I still reapplied my lipstick and fixed my hair, perhaps there’s still a ways to go.