by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: Discs: 1, Overall: 8.5/10
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
Intro:
… sticky, squishy body horror brilliance.
The Substance dropped in 2024 and it hit with atomic force. A critical darling whose virtues were extolled by all the most handsome critics, it also nabbed an absolute truckload of dosh at the box office and made French director Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) one of the most sought after genre voices around.
There’s always a danger with these very hyped films that seem to come out of nowhere that subsequent viewings will be a bit of a letdown. So, with the fancy 4K version from the good people at Madman, does that occur here?
Nah, The Substance still goes super hard, hey.
The Substance is the story of Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who on her 50th birthday is shitcanned from her long-running gig as an aerobics TV host. Desperate to retain any kind of cultural relevance, Elisabeth turns to a very shady company that offers an experimental product, The Substance, that once injected will cure all her ills and allow her to become the “best version” of herself. After some slimy, nasty shenanigans ensue, Sue (Margaret Qualley) is born, literally sliding out of Elisabeth’s skin. Sue is hot, young, firm, pert and beautiful, everything Elisabeth feels that she’s lost. Sue is Elisabeth’s beautiful second chance. However, there’s a catch. Sue can only exist for seven days at a time, then she needs a week off and it’s back to Elisabeth’s saggy older body. Dire consequences will occur if Sue tries to take more time, but honestly… how dire can they really be?
Spoiler alert: staggeringly, mind-blowingly dire, dear reader. This thing gets messy.
The Substance is a sharp, incisive, body horror riff on the likes of The Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s a longform nightmare, a slowly unfolding flesh tragedy about our toxic relationships with our own bodies and our core deep discomfort with aging and death. The script is not subtle, nor is it wildly unpredictable, but it’s so perfectly calibrated to take you on an emotional journey from hope to horror to horny to deeply disgusted and devastated. Put simply, it’s one of the best modern horror films in recent years, buoyed considerably by the performances from Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley (who both give career best turns) and balls-to-the-wall direction from Coralie Fargeat.
Now, this is normally the part of the 4K review where your humble word janitor discusses extras, however there is but one item on the list here: Fargeat’s 2014 French language short film, Reality+. Now, this is actually a really solid short, made ten years ago, very early in the director’s development, and showcases the fact that Fargeat has been obsessed with themes of body image and self disgust for some time. The yarn tells the story of a brain chip that changes your own perception of yourself, making chinless losers appear like muscular Adonises to themselves and anyone else with the chip. Amusingly, the treatment of the material here is quite light, hopeful even, but the set-up is absolutely echoed in The Substance ten years later, right down to the spinal scarring of people who abuse the technology. It’s a very solid film and a great insight into the thought process behind what would eventually become such a breakout hit.
However, that’s all she wrote. Much like the Seven Samurai release from Madman, this is a barebones affair that is recommended for those who don’t give a tinker’s cuss about extras and special features and just want to own one of the best horror flicks around in 4K.
No doubt there will be a more feature rich version in a few years’ time – personally, we would love to see a behind-the-scenes featurette on the special make-up effects and how they achieved the jaw-dropping climax – but for now, this is a solid edition of a truly demented film that belongs on the shelf of everyone who is in the mood to cackle in disbelief and wince in horror at the madness playing out on their tellies for 141 sticky, squishy minutes of body horror brilliance.
