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The Substance (2024)
Reviewed on 2025 March 2
I went into this movie largely knowing noting of it, except that it was a body horror centered around the fight against aging. This was worth the full rental price on Apple, and I don’t say that lightly. This got under my skin in many ways, even though the movie was excellent. It didn’t need a lot of dialog. It still clobbered the audience over the head.
Elizabeth (Demi Moore) is a waning star, organically losing her career trajectory in a world where people have the attention span of fruit flies, and being pushed out by her agent, Harvey (Dennis Quaid). It doesn’t matter that Harvey himself is a boor that only got the exercise of hauling shrimp to his maw, or blathering on his cell phone. (I’ll note here Quaid is a handsome and talented man and Harvey was disgusting.) Never mind the double standard, Harvey tells Elizabeth that for women after fifty “it’s over” and he’s looking for the next new thing. Distraught, Elizabeth gambles on a new system called “The Substance” to give her another shot at what the Harveys of the world deny her. If she pulls this off, she’ll be a younger version of herself.
I think it says something that the two leads here only have a first name — women are interchangeable to a lot of moguls, aren’t they? — and even more that the two women leads are already winners of the gene pool lottery. Demi Moore and Margot Qualley both do an amazing job of acting, and the body horror, while disgusting, is also tragically funny at times. At one point Mr. Shukti came up behind me and asked me what on earth I was watching. I told him I wasn’t quite sure yet, but it was excellent. When you can blend seething rage and humor, you’ve got a powerful weapon. I’m looking forward to see what Coralie Fargeat pulls next out of her arsenal.
Three chocolate morsels.
— Shukti
