Movie Review ~ The Substance

Imagine Death Becomes Her mixed in a blender with razor blades and battery acid, then served in a flaming cocktail glass. That’s The Substance, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s audacious new film that doesn’t just push boundaries—it gleefully shreds them with its teeth. With a visceral blend of horror, dark satire, and twisted body transformations, The Substance slices through toxic beauty culture and demands attention in the loudest, most unapologetic way possible.  And I loved every single bloody second of it.

Set against the backdrop of a youth-obsessed entertainment industry, The Substance follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore, Songbird), a once-famous TV aerobics star who’s unceremoniously dumped on her 50th birthday by sleazy studio exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid, Blue Miracle).  A car accident sends her to the emergency room, where a too-perfect specimen of waxy youthfulness attends to her.  Perhaps he slips a mysterious notecard in her mustard yellow coat (the coat!  My goodness, the coat is almost a character itself!) about a potential solution to her aging woes but she tosses it in the trash, retrieving it later when she becomes desperate.

Enter the titular element—a miraculous serum promising temporary transformation into your perfect self. Ah, but as in all too-good-to-be-true stories, there’s a catch.  This is a gift that is to be used 50/50.  Elisabeth must share her body with the younger, flawless doppelgänger that has just emerged from her in a gruesome sequence involving ripped flesh and muscle.  While Elisabeth lies comatose, her double Sue (Margaret Qualley, Kinds of Kindness) will get to run free in a twisted week-on, week-off schedule she’s responsible for maintaining.  Miss a day or more, and there are side effects.  What follows is Fargeat’s wildly inventive exploration of identity, vanity, and the grotesque consequences of chasing eternal youth.

Fargeat, already known for her visceral work on 2017’s sun-baked Revenge, doubles down on the excess of that thrilling ride with The Substance. It revels in extremes, wielding nudity, violence, and gore like perfectly polished weapons. Yet nothing feels gratuitous. Every shocking moment—whether it’s blood-soaked body horror you’ll want to close your eyes for or the hypersexualized imagery you’ve been taught to divert your eyes to be respectful of —serves a larger purpose. Fargeat dissects the distorted societal obsession with beauty and aging, generating a nightmarish landscape where women are still valued by their appearance, and anyone over a certain age is cast aside once they’ve been drained of their life force.  It’s gloriously disturbing and wickedly entertaining.

Moore is at the center of this gorgeous chaos, delivering a career-defining performance.  As Elisabeth, Moore captures the desperation, rage, and ultimate surrender of a woman fighting against time and irrelevance like someone who has been around the block in the industry and is guided by experience. Her continued need for a transformation into Sue is both chilling and heartbreaking. Moore’s raw vulnerability with her body and fierce determination to match Fargeat’s energy brings an intensity to the film that elevates it from pure shock value trash to something deeper and far more meaningful, especially to those who grew up watching her.

Qualley plays Sue with ethereal perfection, yet her presence has a dark undertone—an awareness that her existence is built on a fragile lie.  She knows her time is limited, and when she wants more, she takes it, failing to see the consequences it will bring in the long run. Though barely onscreen together, Moore and Qualley create a magnetic dynamic, embodying two sides of the same existential crisis that runs on a seven-day cycle. Their performances anchor the film’s gonzo narrative and make it impossible to look away.  While I always preferred to see Moore active, Qualley is turning in her most consistent performance yet.

Fargeat creates a futuristic world that feels familiar yet unsettling, from its pulsating underscore from Raffertie to its striking production design by Stanislas Reydellet.  Glass-walled offices and seedy underground hovels coexist in a surreal, approaching dystopian fever dream.  The make-up effects are disgusting and disgustingly good, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling a surprise but both leading ladies have a ball with playing, let’s just say, against type. Emmanuelle Youchnovski‘s costume design is equally meticulous, transforming Elisabeth’s neon workout gear into Sue’s jewel tones that further call out the inevitable downward spiral Elisabeth/Sue will face. (And I mentioned the yellow coat, right?  It’s been haunting my dreams for weeks now.)

Clocking it at nearly two and a half hours, The Substance is a commitment. However, it plays like such an immersive nightmare that you barely realize you are under its spell until its final, eye-popping minutes when the body sharing reaches its jaw-dropping nexus.  I’ve sat at stoplights that felt longer than this.

I had the great fortune to see The Substance during its Midnight Madness premiere at TIFF, where the audience was fully on board for every goopy twist and splattering turn.   Even at 2 am, you could hear gasps, cheers, and shocked laughter…and that was just from my seat!  Electricity filled the theater, and when Fargeat came out with Moore and Qualley to receive their accolades (to no surprise, the film wound up winning the Midnight Madness Audience Award), the trio was met with thunderous applause. It was clear that Fargeat and her crew had delivered something exceptional, a film that won a top award at Cannes and arrived with major buzz that it more than lived up to. This is the kind of movie that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the credits roll, leaving you shaken and, ultimately, exhilarated.

The Substance is more than just a body-horror spectacle—it’s a ferocious takedown of a society that discards women as they age. Exploring themes of self-worth, identity, and societal expectations, Fargeat uses horror (typically a male-dominated field) as a lens to magnify the cruelty of the entertainment industry (typically a male-run business) and beauty standards.  Whatever movie you think this is, leave those expectations at home.  This isn’t just a film, it’s an experience.