Half the time, it’s exhilarating, and half the time, it’s sickening.
One of the most talked about movies of the season has to be “The Substance,” a body horror film, which writer/director Coralie Fargeat won the Palme d’Or for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. If there’s a black market drug that can make you produce a better version of yourself by literally ripping out of your back, then there is something wickedly freaky and exhilarating about it. But if there are rules and haunting side effects, then there’s going to be a lot of polarizing reactions.
I’m mixed about this movie because as much as I love the originality placed inside, it starts to become too gruesome and sometimes bratty for my tastes. I don’t mind gruesome in other films, I don’t mind crazy, and I don’t mind psychological. It just gets repetitive and spoiled.
Demi Moore gives her best performance in a long while as Elizabeth Sparkle, a celebrity aerobics instructor, who starts to lose her fame and gets fired from her show, because of her age-50. After surviving a car crash, she’s given a flash drive promoting a new substance called “The Substance,” which can make a younger, better version of yourself. It worked on an egg yoke in the opening shot, so why not people? She orders the drug and instruction kit, picks it up in a shabby place, injects herself, and out comes Margaret Qualley as her younger, better self.
The kit requites Qualley, who goes by the name Sue, to inject herself every day, and that they must switch bodies every seven days. No exceptions. The message is: “You Are One.”
At this very moment, Sue wins the attention of Elizabeth’s former boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid), and earning herself the new aerobics show “Pump It Up with Sue,” which through our perspectives looks like an MTV music video than an exercise video.
But of course, with every experiment, there are always side effects. And given the fact that Elizabeth and Sue switch, the stakes are higher. Sue is the evil one (of course she is), as she tampers with the medication, and begins to damage Elizabeth. So why doesn’t the 50-year/old woman fight back against the youngster? And each time they damage one another, they call the drug genius, who always gives them the same response: “There is no she and you. Your are one. Respect the balance and you won’t have any more inconveniences.”
But boy, are there more inconveniences as the switches and drugs cumulate into something grotesque and freaky at the end. I can imagine how movie goers will respond as they walk out of the theater. And it’s still debatable. They’re either going to appreciate what the genre has provided or they’ll walk out repulsed. I remember at a screening of “mother!” when an old man walked up to me and said: “Utter garbage.”
My reaction is that “The Substance” isn’t garbage because Moore shines, Qualley is sexy, and the concept is entertaining. But it isn’t a classic because of how the side effects begin to depress and nauseate us. They also involve teeth and what starts off as a fingernail ends up as a finger problem. As I watched the film, I felt there’s something original inside, and as I finished, I needed time to process my emotions. And when Moore and Qualley do finally meet, it has to end in blood shed. You bet it does.
