The Substance Review: Bloody Horrible. Bloody Fantastic.

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley deliver one of the years best films, if you can only hold on to your lunch while watching

After winning the best screenplay award at this year’s Cannes film festival writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s second feature film The Substance was scooped up by Mubi, who’ve since released a deliriously enticing ad campaign that just barely hints at the film’s true nature: this is a genre defining body horror. Seriously, those of a squeamish disposition need watch no further.

Once a global superstar actress with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has these days been relegated to a morning work out show with dwindling audience numbers. When on the eve of her 50^th birthday Elisabeth is pulled aside by a repulsive studio exec (Dennis Quaid) and told she’s being fired and replaced with a younger star, she is sent spiralling into insecurity about her age and body.

Elisabeth is soon seduced into taking ‘The Substance,’ a black-market experimental drug that will allow her to become a ‘better version of herself.’ In reality it gruesomely causes her to grow ‘Sue,’ a younger version of herself played by Margaret Qualley. Elisabeth and Sue essentially time share one body – each spending a week at a time as themselves followed by a week in a sort of stasis whilst the other takes over. The instructions packaged alongside the drug dictate they MUST share the time equally, swapping bodies back and fore after exactly one week. As Sue takes over Elisabeth’s old workout video job and becomes a smash hit, the two women predictably struggle to adhere to the rules and The Substance starts to have repulsive and rapidly spreading side effects.

While Qualley has racked up movies with several notable auteur directors in recent years, this is Moore’s most interesting work in decades and she is in turns captivatingly vulnerable and terrifyingly unhinged. Both women deliver utterly fearless performances in a film that glossily exposes every inch of their bodies in scenes that alternately titillate and repulse.

Fargeat’s messaging is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, The Substance skewering the unfair beauty standards society places on women while also acknowledging the insidious internal nature of these expectations – for in the end Elisabeth’s biggest enemy is actually herself. For all that it feels like a feral scream of righteous feminist rage this is also a filmmaker having fun with big genre storytelling, for when things do get really and truly gross it’s often undercut with a hint of humour. ‘Oh, you liked looking at the woman gyrating in a leotard?’ she asks us – ‘well how about you look as rips her own teeth out one by one – no go ahead and look, REALLY LOOK.’

I’d always sort of scoffed at the idea of horror films making people throw up or pass out in the cinema, reactions for the weak I’d thought. Yet The Substance is the film that finally shook me, displaying a level of gore that had me feeling sick to my stomach (note to potential viewers – do not spend the first two hours stuffing yourself with snacks – you may regret it!) The ultimate movie going experience, this is a film that demands to be seen in a cinema with a crowd of people gasping, wincing and desperately trying to hide behind their hands.

The only thing that stops this reimagined video nasty from being a five-star film is it’s over long run time, a 2hr20 stretch that feels particularly long due to a series of false endings in the final act. Every time you think it’s over it just keeps coming, as we reach a Looney Tunes level of ridiculousness. For better or worse The Substance is audaciously and purposefully over the top.

Surely an instant horror classic, The Substance is an uncomfortable but unforgettable experience. It’s in cinemas everywhere from 20^th September 2024.