A Newer, Better You

Hollywood loves stories about Hollywood. If you want to make Oscar bait all you have to do is write a story about show business, setting it in and around Los Angeles, and make sure you drop references to how films or shows are made, and how being a star is such a big deal. The people that watch films and vote for the Oscars will absolutely eat that shit up and will nominate your film for the big show. Even if you don’t win you’ll garner a lot of attention, and your film doesn’t even really need to be good to make this happen. I still see debates online about whether La La Land was really worth the hype or not, but it certainly scored a lot of nominations (even if it didn’t win Best Picture).

What I like, though, are the films that are clearly playing to that same genre, the same expectations, before taking a hard swerve right off into different territory altogether. You think you’re going to get a drama about Hollywood but then, out of nowhere, you’re plunged into a body horror film with blood, guts, and lots of gore. That’s The Substance, a film that easily could have just been a story about an aging starlet that suddenly finds herself out of work, with no clue about where to go or what to do next. And while I’m sure that film could have been interesting, The Substance is so much more.

Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a one-time Oscar winner with her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But that was years ago, and over the decades since, Elisabeth has hosted a long-running aerobics show on television. However, that all comes to an end when her producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), fires her on her 50th anniversary because (not that he says this directly to her face) she’s too old. In his eyes, too unattractive. He wants someone young, fresh, new. Someone sexy he can lust after. Elisabeth is out and Harvey will find someone else to take over the timeslot and start a new aerobics show.

Devastated, Elisabeth enters a kind of fugue state, eventually getting into a car wreck. At the hospital she’s told she’s fine, and will recover nicely without any real injuries. Still, she breaks down into tears, unsure of what to make of her life. That’s when a nurse (Robin Greer) passes her a weird flash drive advertising “The Substance”, with a note saying “this changed my life”. Although hesitant to call, Elisabeth eventually does, and she ends up with a kit full of weird chemicals and instructions. She takes the first chemical, injecting it into her arm and suddenly, from her back, births a younger, newer duplicate of herself (eventually named Sue, played by Margaret Qualley). And while this gives her exactly what Elisabeth wanted, it also quickly becomes a nightmare she can’t escape.

The Substance is a film that never really lets up. At each turn of the plot it goes a direction you wouldn’t expect. Even that initial sequence, with Elisabeth taking the drug to start a new life for herself doesn’t work exactly as you would expect. Instead of it making her younger, newer, able to restart her life, instead it gives her a new, young version that she has to share her life with. One week Sue is awake, and Elisabeth is passed out in a hidden room, living her life as the new star of Pump It Up with Sue. The next week Sue is passed out and Elisabeth is awake, still in her old body, watching the younger version of herself have the life she expected. It didn’t refresh her, it just gave her someone else to watch have the dream she always wanted.

The Substance is a body horror film (and it gets more horror-filled from here, but I won’t spoil it) with the specific message of “be careful what you wish for”. Elisabeth, in effect, gets what she asked for but not what she really wanted. She didn’t want to create something else that lived her life for her. She wanted that life herself and she doesn’t get to have it. In this regard it’s like all those pageant and showbiz moms that force their kids into the starlet lifestyle so they can live vicariously through their children. Sue, despite having all of Elisabeth’s memories up to the point of her creation, is the progeny that gets to have all the advantages while Elisabeth is forced to watch from the sidelines. And, yes, this does cause a serious rift to grow between them as the older version regrets all the things she’s lost.

But it also shines a light on how Hollywood takes young women, uses them up, and then casts them away. Sue is only popular as long as she’s pretty, and she’s expected to smile, to show up, to be sexy. She can’t have problems, she can’t get old. If she changes in any way she’ll be cast aside (and the film eventually gets to that in over-the-top fashion, but I won’t spoil how that goes either). Elisabeth was her, and she devoted her life to her career and her fans, never even having children (not until, effectively, she gave “birth” to Sue) and then, in the end, Hollywood was done with her the second she wasn’t young enough and pretty enough anymore. Instead of having her grow into some other position, like Harvey’s, it’s only the men that get to be executives while Elisabeth is cast out into the cold.

To be popular again Elisabeth has to be young and sexy, and the film lets her marvel at that as well. The film doesn’t shy away from sex and nudity, letting the male gaze (as filtered through the female desires for their own relevancy) filter what we see. Elisabeth is older, and she looks at herself (nude) and sees everything she lost. Sue is young, vivacious, taut, and she marvels at how young and fit her body now looks. She has all the sex and power, she thinks, so she can be famous once more. But when that starts to slip (because this fantasy always has to slip, especially in a horror film) then she feels how powerless she really is.

There’s a lot of twists and turns in The Substance that takes the film in so many ways I wouldn’t expect. There are moments of pathos and tragedy, and then moments of horror and gore. Sometimes these come back-to-back, and it shifts a scene from hard to watch into something hard to look away from. The Substance is gross and disgusting as frequently as it is erotic and sexy, and you know that was all by design from writer / director / producer Coralie Fargeat. She wanted to hook people one way and then shake them by swerving and never letting the film settle down. And that’s great, because it keeps the film feeling fresh and interesting at every messed, fucked up turn it takes.

The film is a body horror piece, on the level that would gain Cronnenberg’s attention, so it is very fucked up. At each turn for Sue’s life, Elisabeth suffers in some way or another. Not that Sue is blameless, mind you, as she is a contributing factor into all the punishment Elisabeth gets over the course of the film. That feeds back into that “be careful what you wish for” narrative, but Elisabeth constantly experiences the problems with making her rash decision to take a drug she didn’t understand and, now, has to live with. And that all gets back to her ego because she could let it all go, not support this other life, not try to recapture what she once had… except she can’t because even if it’s vicariously, she still wants to experience it.

The Substance shines a light on the very fucked up nature of Hollywood. It shows how the industry takes these women and uses them up, but also how, in a way, the women are encouraged to be part of this system to gain some kind of validation. They’re left in a place where this is all they have and if they lose their stardom they have nothing. It’s sad, and sick, and horrifying, and beyond all the body horror of this film that’s the real lesson. The Substance nails its message, and all horror that goes with, and it does it with bloody, stick aplomb.

And, amusingly, because it’s Hollywood, The Substance was nominated for a ton of awards, including at the Oscars. I won for makeup but was nominated for more, missing out on Best Screenplay, Actress, and Picture. Still, it clearly resonated with audiences. It was probably too much to expect a horror movie to win top awards at the Oscars, but it certainly got up there and that’s meaningful, too. If only its message could make real change in the industry it’s all about.