The Substance

Oh boy, where do we start?

The first thing to say is that this film is going to divide audiences, you’ll either love it or loathe it but I can’t see anyone sitting in the middle ground for this as it almost expects that you have a strong view on it.

Secondly this is a film that will present a different viewing experience in the cinema where the sheer size of the screen made it feel like an almost hallucinatory experience than on the small screen where it will feel more like some sort of missing video nasty from the eighties. I strongly suspect that both will reveal different aspects of the film and I can’t wait to see it on the smaller screen.

Lastly the BBFC were completely on point with their almost essay length description of content, you really do need to know what you’re letting yourself in for before sitting down. I think the last film I saw where this was the case was Antichrist and again that was a similar viewing experience, albeit one that wasn’t quite as disturbing.

So how do you describe it without giving away anything? Friends have asked and I’ve said “Imagine that David Cronenberg directed Mulholland Drive”, but that’s not really accurate. “Imagine that David Cronenberg directed Mulholland Drive but became obsessed with Society halfway through filming” may be more accurate. There’s an element of Hollywood fable to it that it shares with Mulholland Drive, but there’s also a strong dose of body-horror played straight for yuks and it lacks the subtlety of both Cronenberg and Lynch which is something I thought I’d never really say. It’s also more overtly political in its message than either of those directors works and doesn’t shy away from holding a mirror up to society that I can’t recall either of them coming close to doing. It is this societal comment that gives the film its real teeth. And this film has teeth in more ways than one.

Body-horror only just starts to cover the sights on offer here. There are scenes that will elicit “Bloody hell!” on more than one occasion and there’s a pleasing physicality to all of the effects with the sense that digital has only been used to clean up the edges. Indeed one of the most horrifying scenes requires no effects work whatsoever but instead consists of an extreme close up of someone eating shrimp. It’s worse than it sounds and an example of where the visuals are enhanced by what can only be described as one of the most visceral sounding soundscapes of recent memory with every broken bone, lost tooth or piece of French cuisine suitably ramped up. Aside from the more obviously monstrous elements of the film the body-horror is also on a deeply believable level as teeth, fingernails and cracking joints all timetable the shared breakdown of the same character.

It’s not subtle – subtle is on the corner rocking back and forth – but neither is it crass, instead pitched perfectly from start to finish so that the opening image is bookended with the same image but played less for laughs. Everything has the volume turned up but it’s hard to see how else this could work.

Which brings us to the key driver of the film, a set of performances that are glorious to behold. I’ll start with Dennis Quaid who has the least screen time but is utterly repellent every moment he’s on screen as a sort of garish caricature of a human being  and in particular the male gaze, all false smiles and charm and no redeeming features. Everything he does is driven by a desire for more power, more money and more status and he’ll stop at nothing to get there. However this is a film dominated by the Moore / Qualley duo of both sides of a characters shared self-hatred for what they are, what they were and what they could be. I’d not seen Qualley in anything before but there’s a full on commitment to what could be an unsympathetic role as she is ultimately the means of her own self destruction.

However the film belongs to Moore and her willingness to explore her own image and the past image that was created of her in extreme, often painful detail. The highlight of the film for me is a scene where she continually reassesses her own image in front of a mirror with the weight of the expectations of the industry she has been part of resting fully on her. Skin is rubbed raw in an attempt to achieve the ludicrous standards that she now demands of herself in a manner that is far more painful to watch than any of the multiple bodily transformation sequences that the film provides. I’m always pleased when actors not normally associated with the horror genre turn up and show a real flair for it and Moore doesn’t disappoint by committing fully from start to (inevitable) finish. It’s also refreshing to realise that whilst she may have been in some bad films in the past she was never bad herself, just the victim of some poor career choices and mediocre films. Certainly I’d hope to see her continue to push the boundaries like this, make interesting choices and enjoy the plaudits she richly deserves for this.

In summary if you’ve got the stomach for it then The Substance is an absolute blast from start to finish, smart and funny and with a clutch of performances that are superb and add a real heft to the film. It isn’t for everybody but you’ll know beforehand if this is something that you’re going to appreciate. I’m not sure I saw a better film in 2024. I certainly didn’t see one I was so eager to talk about.