Film Review | The Substance (2024)
i wish films would stop pretending to be feminist.
Horror is a woman’s genre.
This is a take I’ll always be ready to defend. What I mean is, horror is a genre where women are often victims, sometimes survivors, and once in a while even the perpetrators of harm if we’re feeling edgy. True to life, women, a population overly familiar with the intricacies of pain and violence, are typically at the eye of the average horror movie storm. This offers a great foundation for a film wanting to make social commentary. I think The Substance was aiming to do something along those lines, but disappointingly it never really figured out what it wanted to say and what it did manage to articulate was hardly profound.
I excitedly bought a ticket to see a late Friday night viewing of The Substance. It was a packed theater. I knew next to nothing about the film. I hadn’t seen a trailer, a movie poster, or a single review yet but I had seen the title pop up just often enough on social media to know it was buzzworthy and possibly worth the watch. I try to give myself as blind of a viewing experience as possible to avoid having my first impressions tainted by outside influences.
My lasting takeaway is that, regardless of whether it’s a “good” movie or not, The Substance made for a delightful theater experience. The film was visually stunning and well-shot, with great sound design. Its cinematography was poetic, the body horror was beautifully gruesome, and the humor was balanced. I loved the ending and beginning with the Hollywood star. Loved all the overhead shots and the super zoom ins. This was certainly a FUN cinematic experience, which isn’t surprising. Films usually do excel at casting, sound, and special effects, notoriously neglecting plot. I think they’re hoping the lights and colors will keep audiences from realizing things don’t quite add up. Which is definitely what happened here—The Substance was a missed opportunity to tell a more interesting story.
(Spoilers Ahead!)
For how superficial it was, the message was a little too on the nose. Oh, beauty standards are impossible, youth is prized above all else and older women are seen as disposable when they’re no longer young and fertile? Cool. Haven’t heard that one before, anything else?
The film’s premise is flimsy to begin with: Individuals who sign up to take The Substance are promised a new and improved "best" version of themselves—the same DNA but optimized to full capacity. And yet that stops at...looks? Is it not realistic to also expect the second self to have superior intelligence and logical decision making as well? Boosted empathy? No? Instead our second lead is just gonna be a petulant brat the whole time? Great, okay thanks.
And let’s talk about that for a moment—lots of reviewers point out how our main character, former A-list celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle, is not getting much out of this deal from the start, but what about the people behind The Substance? Their marketing tactic is seemingly just “word of mouth”1 and we never see money exchanged or requested. And frankly there should be, because I just know the Customer Service guy was sick of hearing “503” towards the end and wasn’t getting paid enough to care about their problems at all.
Fired from the aerobics show she starred in for being “too old," on her birthday of all days, Elisabeth Sparkle figures she can regain some Hollywood relevance and a sense of purpose in life by taking The Substance. Which again, promises the user a new and improved alternate self. They are told that they and the Other Self “are one” and not two separate entities, but the film doesn’t really do much to support this narrative.
From the moment Elisabeth’s alter, Sue, graces the screen, her disdain for Elisabeth is palpable. Her first full week alive, Sue never bothers to move Elisabeth off the bathroom floor where she lays in a pool of her own blood, recovering from the massive spinal wound Sue herself emerged from. Instead, Sue’s first priority ia creating a secret room in their apartment to hide Elisabeth away. (By the way, was anyone else wondering how the building's owner felt about that...and are we really to believe she did that solo in only three days?? 🤨 Insane.) Her second priority? Scoring the lead role for the show Elisabeth just got fired from. No thought is given to opting out of the shallow cesspool that is Hollywood, but I can understand this in a way: what’s familiar is comfortable, even if it’s bad.
Sue never liked Elisabeth at any point, and seemed to have a lot of immediate contempt for her. She finds Elisabeth to be gross, old and fat and treats her body like a vending machine for stablilizer boosts since that’s all it’s good for as far as she’s concerned. That she and Elisabeth never interact only serves to further Sue’s disregard for the damage of her selfishness (stealing extra time when it’s her turn to be “on” causes Elisabeth to rapidly age and deteriorate). Elisabeth and Sue aren’t ever supposed to be conscious at the same time and they make no efforts to communicate beyond leaving messes for the other to clean up—no post-it notes, nothing to bridge the gap. This would make sense if they were truly “one” person but they present as two separate personalities with seperate goals and feelings, and almost no shared memories between them. The one instance they are awake at the same time, both women recoil in fear before the scene devolves into rage and violence.
Even if she didn’t care that Elisabeth was her—or at least was her lifeline—Sue’s choices at the end are baffling. Knowing your existence is DEPENDENT on this person’s body for sustenance, you kill her? What sense does that make? I’d have preferred Sue was just a full psychopath, keeping Elisabeth barely alive so that she could live forever at her expense. That would've been so much more cruel and intriguing than her turning out to be dumb despite the alleged optimal genetics.
Another thing: I expected the Second Self to be a “you but younger” type, resembling a beautified version of how the user looked at that age in real life. Yet no attention was ever called to any physical resemblances between Elisabeth and Sue. When asking Sue on her late night talk show appearance, "Did you watch Elisabeth Sparkle growing up?" I expected the interviewer to remark that Sue looked just like her. That no one brought it up further contradicted the idea that they are truly “one” in any meaningful sense—under this arrangement, Elisabeth isn’t inheriting Sue’s memories, or transferring her consciousness back and forth between their bodies, and her alter doesn’t even bear enough resemblance to her to bring her name back into circulation even just to make the comparison.
For most of the film, Elisabeth is resigned to laying naked on a cold floor every other week, having her spinal fluid drained against her will, and waking up increasingly disfigured. She finds consolation in knowing that Sue is linked to her and derives some vicarious triumph from her success yet is also consumed by self-loathing and envy. Objectively, what has she gained beyond decay, devastation and loneliness? Some speculate the film is presenting a metaphor for the self-sacrificial nature of motherhood, but even then the film doesn’t openly incite the viewer to empathize with the tragic undertones of Elisabeth’s predicament as much as it invites us to recoil at the “horror” of her becoming uglier with age. Strangely, the narrative implies Elisabeth deserves ridicule for wanting to still have value in a world that demands her to be beautiful—rather than leveraging its critique at the Society perpetuating this system, The Substance fixates on the women participating in the rigged game their livelihood hinges on.
Still, there were many fun parts to watch. I thoroughly enjoyed that scene towards the end where Monstro-ElisaSue douses the entire audience in blood. It was very Carrie-esque but like the inverse: the big "prom night" signature event arrives and there's blood everywhere but this time on the "bullies" (the audience=society; the execs, etc) instead of the "victim." The blood was glorious.
The Substance was also often silly and camp, like the grotesque cooking scene (food being depicted as disgusting was repeated throughout), Sue later having such superhuman strength that a kick to Elisabeth sends her body flying into the air, or that scene with the Monster trying to curl her one strand of hair like she was really doing something. (Watching her struggle to put on earrings when it's like, you don't even have ears?! Babe, please get your priorities straight! I giggled a lot at that.)
Oh and let's not forget all the butt closeups. Can't spell SUBSTANCE without "ass," amirite?? 😏
Here’s what I would’ve tried to tweak plot-wise to give us a similar but slightly improved narrative:
Elisabeth is switching her singular consciousness between bodies.
Life in the new body is great, so great that having to “revert” back to her older self is underwhelming. She decides to switch to being young and beautiful full time, reanimating her increasingly hideous body just enough to keep her beautiful one alive.
She does this for a while before ultimately push her old body past its limits. It simply just gives out and dies. She’s now “trapped” in the new body as Sue, with the anxious awareness that her clock is ticking, and trying to stretch out her time as long as she can, at least just enough to make it to the big “new year” special show.
And then she gets on stage, and she’s in her beautiful dress even though her teeth and her nails are falling out, and she almost gets to enjoy her big moment, but at this point her body is so unstable that she basically erupts (keeping to the blood bath scene) or something.
And maybe the final shot is one that shows her, as Sue, still feeling like this was all worth it somehow, in a sad delusional sort of way.
Even this could be improved lol but it’s still a more interesting take on the premise!!
Overall, my final rating is: 3/5 stars.
Not the deepest film, and certainly no feminist masterpiece as close as it gets to saying something interesting, but still entertaining and gory and funny.
The word of mouth thing is interesting—Elisabeth hears about The Substance from a male hospital nurse, with the note, “It changed my life.” This same nurse can tell she’s miserable and after examining her spine calls her “a perfect candidate.” This almost makes it sound like the nurse is a recruiter for the company but presumbably he’s just the Second Self of another customer. It’s a strange interaction.
Ohhh I may have to watch ! Have you watched the Platform ?