What would you do in order to regain your youth, your beauty, your old life? What is a willing tradeoff for it? In 1992, a movie came out that asked these questions, complete with a science fiction angle, an excuse to tell a morality tale about aging and self-image. In that movie, Meryl Streep drinks a serum that restores her body to its former glory, but the tradeoff is that it’s not quite alive anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. It never ages again, but if it is damaged in such a way that would be fatal to a regular person, it will go on living while also never really healing. This concept is played up for laughs as Meryl Streep breaks her neck falling down the stairs while her rival, played by Goldie Hawn, has a massive hole blown through her abdomen, both of them still able to walk around like puppeteer’d corpses. When I first saw this film in the early 90s, I had no idea it would have the legs that it did. To me, it was just a silly comedy, and the ending just reaffirmed that to me. But there was something about the concept that struck a chord with people, and it remains a popular film to this day.
It wasn’t the first film to tackle the concept of aging, not by a landslide. The topic has cropped up in films going back practically to the beginning of the medium. It was one of the main themes in the Oscar-nominated Sunset Boulevard, in which an aging actress has driven herself mad with loneliness now that movie roles are no longer coming her way. Billy Wilder’s film was on my mind a lot during the early parts of 2024’s The Substance, and Death Becomes Her was on my mind the rest of the way to the insanely over-the-top finale. Scholars could probably point out dozens of other films that served as inspiration for this horror film that has the distinction of being one of a select few to ever crack the Academy Awards Best Picture category.
Coralie Fargeat has few credits to her name. She’s done some work in short films and television but has really only directed two films to date: the 2017 exploitation rape and revenge action thriller Revenge, and The Substance. Her sophomore outing has managed to captivate critics and audiences alike despite being categorized as a body horror film, a sub-genre that usually doesn’t even merit a blip on critics’ radar. What makes this one different, then? It is brutally honest about the entertainment industry, including taking jabs at the obsession with outward beauty and societal expectations. It also gives us a protagonist that is as awful as the people she is trying to appeal to. But it does so gradually. When the film opens, we are on our lead actress’s side, and we stay there for quite some time.
The film follows Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a once-heralded actress with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Lately, though, that star has fallen on harder times. The opening shot is of that Walk of Fame star, first being built, then displayed, finally faded and cracked from the ravages of time. Eventually, some schmo drops his take-out fast food on it and smears ketchup all over it while trying half-heartedly to clean up his mess. This brief montage tells you everything you need to know about the trajectory of this film, including exactly where it will end.
When we catch up with Elizabeth, she is now fifty years old and the star of a long-running aerobics show on television. But one day she overhears the producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid) discussing loudly into his cell phone that she is going to be fired and replaced with a much younger woman; the sad realities of growing old in Hollywood. Distraught by this news, Elizabeth is distracted while driving and is hit by another vehicle. Her doctor finds nothing wrong with her, but another medical professional whispers something enigmatic in her ear, that she is the perfect specimen for something new. This turns out to be a new wonder drug, known simply as The Substance. You cannot get prescribed this new drug, though. You have to call a specific phone number and request it.
At first, Elizabeth doesn’t believe what she is being pitched, but eventually she gets desperate enough and calls the number. Soon afterwards, she is in possession of a small package with some sketchy supplies and vague directions. The way the drug works is you inject the glowing green liquid into your veins, then a separation takes place. A younger version of yourself rips itself out of the older body. You sew that old body back up and keep it alive through IV feeds, injecting your younger body with some fluid you remove from the spine of the old body. This is done once a day, and after seven days, you have to switch back over to the old body and be in control of that for another seven days. Every seven days, back and forth, no exceptions. Failure to follow that schedule and bad things, irreversible things will happen.
Naturally, Elizabeth’s younger half, going by the name Sue (Margaret Qualley), soon begins to get greedy and not want to revert back to the old body. She gets hired on as Elizabeth’s replacement on the aerobics show and heats things up with highly erotic moves and suggestive camera shots. This makes her an instant star, and with that comes demands on her time that fall outside the seven-day schedule. She continues to push against changing back, sacrificing the older body more and more until things go beyond the breaking point.
In more recent years, there has been a bigger push for body positivity. But that doesn’t mean a whole lot to the person who looks in the mirror and all they can see is the encroaching grey hairs or the crow’s feet around the eyes. The cosmetic surgery business is still going strong, and people spend millions and millions every year trying to stave off the advancement of age. Even worse are the people who scrutinize images and videos of celebrities trying to call them out for cosmetic procedures, looking to shame them for daring to try and grasp at the straw that was their youth. Ultimately, it is a fool’s dream because outward appearance will not keep a person alive indefinitely, and eventually, time will run out.
Nowhere in the film did we get an answer as to whether either half of Elizabeth will continue to age or if the younger version will stay perpetually the age she currently looks. If she had stayed faithful to the seven-and-seven schedule, would she be able to keep this up indefinitely, or would the older body eventually succumb to old age, leaving the younger half to self-destruct shortly afterwards? This is an allegory and thus is not interested in those details any more than the realism of how Sue would be being paid without a valid SSN number of her own. If I’m asking these questions in the moment, then the film is failing to engage me on at least some level.
Demi Moore is the standout here, as the older actress who’s desperate to remain relevant. She’s in an entirely different movie than anyone else on screen. Rightfully, she has been singled out for an Oscar nomination and has already won the Golden Globe for this film. This is a career high for her after years of being relegated to making popcorn films or getting snubbed in the Best Picture nominee Ghost when her co-star Whoopi Goldberg was accepting her statuette. Demi Moore is looking like the frontrunner this year, but there is still a lot of time before this year’s awards are handed out.
Margaret Qualley, on the other hand, is basically playing the sex-pot in this film. Half the time, she is either standing around fully nude or dancing provocatively in front of the cameras. After a while, it loses any shock value and just becomes mind-numbingly boring. Her best moments are when she is confronting her older self and fighting to stay the one in control. There is no real surprises in the story, either, as we know she is not going to follow the schedule, otherwise there would be no movie.
The men in the film are all, with one exception, portrayed as horndogs and scumbags, salivating over a beautiful woman and acting repulsed by an older one. There have been complaints about this film being misogynist and sexist, complaints that are usually quashed by people pointing out that the writer and director is a woman. That doesn’t make it any less sexist. There is so much male gaze on display here, and only some of it is justified. When we see Demi Moore examining her sagging body, that is telling us her perspective on her looks. Later, when she is switched out with Margaret Qualley and she is once again looking her body over, it is telling us again what is going on in her head. But scene after scene after scene of Margaret gyrating her hips and thrusting her pelvis on what is only thinly disguised as an aerobics show goes too far, and it becomes exploitative. Perhaps that is what Coralie Fargeat was going for, but if that is the case, then she missed the target by hitting that note way too often. When we do focus on the men in the story it is over the top absurdity. We get inundated by an extreme closeup of Harvey shoving loads of shrimp down his throat, chomping down on them with his mouth wide open. We get it, he’s a pig.
When the film does finally get to the finale, it pulls out all the plugs and becomes so grotesque and absurd that it is no longer scary. Suddenly, it feels like we are in the remake of Carrie where Chlöe Grace Moretz is killing everyone in the school gym. In this case, though, instead of killing everyone, she is just drenching them in blood and gore. Like the aerobics, this moment gets the point across and then keeps on going until I was just numb from watching it. The final shot brings the whole film back to the beginning and was amusing enough to get a half-smile from me, but by the time I got there, this film had exhausted my patience, and I was ready to be finished.
This is a film with a lot of good things to say about body positivity and the lengths we go to achieve our image of beauty. Unfortunately, it doesn’t know when to dial things back, and it runs for way too long. It’s nice to see a film like this getting the Oscar recognition, especially for Fargeat as director, but aside from Demi Moore, who really does deserve to win, I don’t feel that this one will get much of anything else at the show. It’s creative, but it is just too much of everything else. A little can go a long way and this film goes well beyond a little.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, and Eric Fellner
Best Director: Coralie Fargeat
Best Actress: Demi Moore
Best Original Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon, and Marilyne Scarselli (won)
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Release Date: September 20, 2024
Running Time: 141 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid
Directed By: Coralie Fargeat
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