'The Substance' review: Demi Moore dazzles in a derivative midnight snooze

"Have you ever dreamt of a amended type of yourself?" asks The Substance. Repeated for illustration a ritualistic chant, this provocation and committedness echoes via nan in-universe advertizing for a mysterious body-swapping product, which allows group to create a younger type of themselves. The insecurities of a middle-aged character return halfway shape successful Coralie Fargeat's sophomore feature, nan assemblage scary romp that won her nan Best Screenplay grant astatine Cannes. However, contempt featuring a fewer astute ideas astir aging, nan consequence feels dramatically scattered, and — ironically, fixed its attempted takedown of really women are perceived successful Hollywood — aesthetically superficial.

While visceral successful spurts, The Substance is ne'er rather successful power of its satire connected sexualization, an excess successful which it revels without ever meaningfully subverting. Its lead performances are fine-tuned — particularly from Demi Moore, who delivers intrepid, career-best activity — but nan movie is much a postulation of mild jabs than a full-throated deconstruction of a taste gaze.  

That said, if gory applicable delights are what you seek, past The Substance mightiness thrill you connected occasion, particularly successful its blood-soaked finale. However, its gestures toward empowerment and cinematic reclamation are excessively often insubstantial.

What is The Substance about?

Fargeat introduces america to '80s activity awesome Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore), not done her on-screen activity but done a fixed close-up of her prima connected nan Hollywood Walk of Fame arsenic nan decades spell by. Like nan character herself, nan plaque is initially fawned over, but yet forgotten and ignored. This is astir arsenic meaningfully symbolic arsenic nan movie gets, fixed really intimately entwined Elizabeth's celebrated sidewalk tile is to her personage status, and her worthy successful nan nationalist eye.

When we first meet Elizabeth, she's nan big of an aerobic workout show, an outmoded shape of television, for which she wears distinctly 1980s gear. Now successful her fifties, she's a nostalgia act, and she soon learns that her obnoxious web executive boss, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), wants to switch her pinch personification younger. However, astatine a regular doctor's visit, she meets an ethereally dashing young expert who looks practically airbrushed, and tips her disconnected astir a life-changing merchandise by slipping her a telephone number. After a spot of sleuthing and a insignificant scavenger hunt, she ends up successful possession of a personalized aesculapian kit pinch strict instructions successful ample people reminiscent of a beauty start-up, and a creepy but informative video clip filmed for illustration a pristine advertisement. "Have you ever dreamt of a amended type of yourself?" nan sound successful nan video asks, earlier introducing her to "the substance," a cell-splitting chemic that will let her to — done disquieting intends champion near unspoiled — fundamentally clone a caller type of herself.

We often spot Elizabeth inspecting her bare assemblage successful nan mirror, looking for lesions and sagging skin. But erstwhile she creates a younger type of herself — an avatar who goes by nan mononym Sue (Margaret Qualley) — this caller and "improved" doppelgänger features nary of those perceived imperfections. It's besides peculiarly notable that, for illustration nan young physician, Sue has bluish eyes alternatively of Elizabeth's green, an ostensible "improvement" upon whose group dimensions nan movie ne'er touches.

It is, perhaps, understandable that nan film's attack to nan cognition of feminine beauty remains locked into achromatic and Western standards, since this is nan lens done which nan achromatic Gen X personage Elizabeth views herself, though it becomes astatine slightest mildly frustrating by nan end. Through its crippled mechanics, which impact Sue and Elizabeth swapping states of waking and unconsciousness for a week astatine a clip truthful that their paths ne'er cross, nan movie goes to awesome lengths to present galore different dimensions to their move pinch each other, and pinch nan world astir them. However, for each caller thought introduced by The Substance, different seems to autumn by nan wayside, leaving small room to research nan wider implications of nan assemblage arsenic portion of nan assemblage politic.

The film's premise besides grows progressively bothersome pinch really small it's really geared towards Elizabeth's psychology and self-reflections.

The scary sci-fi crippled of The Substance feels incomplete.

The mysterious quality of "the substance" allows its rules to beryllium written connected nan fly, but Fargeat seldom seems to return advantage of this. There are chopped limitations placed connected really overmuch clip Sue tin walk surviving Elizabeth's life and vice versa, and location are clear consequences for breaking these rules, but nan enticement to break them is seldom rooted successful strong-enough notions of character.

To commencement with, nan existent psychological narration betwixt nan 2 actresses remains unclear. Despite nan insistence of nan company's spokesperson (over nan phone) and its galore printed reminders that Elizabeth and Sue are 1 person, they're made instantly chopped successful their wants, and go 2 abstracted characters tethered to these rules by happenstance. Furthermore, arsenic Sue scales nan ladder of occurrence and each but replaces Elizabeth, nan seasoned character has small inducement to support up this crippled of play body-switching, moreover though an brushwood pinch different personification utilizing nan merchandise seems to framework it arsenic a benignant of addiction. The film's melodramatic connection only ever highlights nan contrary. Since astatine slightest 1 of them has to beryllium unconscious astatine each times, Elizabeth is hardly a passive perceiver to Sue's life, only witnessing its aftermath erstwhile she awakens. Elizabeth neither benefits materially from Sue’s success, nor gains immoderate tactile pleasance from letting Sue retired into nan world, since nan 2 women stock nary mental, emotional, aliases metaphysical connection.

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This does, astatine times, consequence successful a benignant of mother-daughter dynamic, wherein Elizabeth wants to (but cannot) unrecorded vicariously done a younger hold of herself, and it's besides astatine times virtually a communicative of a younger character replacing an older one. Moore efficaciously channels nan fears and jealousies therein, but nan storytelling remains perpetually astatine likelihood pinch each 1 of these underlying themes. Scenes of each character inspecting themselves successful nan reflector are placed successful crisp opposition pinch 1 another, introducing nan benignant of dysmorphia brought connected by cosmetic surgery. But nan premise — of a middle-aged female and her younger transcript ne'er occupying nan aforesaid beingness aliases psychological abstraction — prevents immoderate 1 of these ideas from taking clasp emotionally.

At 1 point, Elizabeth wakes up to find that Sue, while heavy intoxicated, has made rash decisions that impact some their careers. The older character insists that these weren't her choices but those of personification else, frankincense invoking nan connection of constituent maltreatment — different crutch an aging character mightiness move to successful bid to header pinch being discarded — only this doesn't activity arsenic intended. While it echoes nan denial and self-delusion that tin travel addiction, Elizabeth is besides simply correct astir Sue being her ain chopped person. The Substance demands to beryllium publication done an absurd lens, but it remains excessively tethered to nan literal, done crossed wires and half-baked themes, for nan benignant of poetic readings that mightiness make it consciousness harmonious.

The filmmaking successful The Substance feels confused.

Elizabeth's communicative often useful successful isolation, particularly erstwhile her fears of aging — and of losing her master and individual worth successful nan process — return disquieting beingness form. The movie is astatine its astir unnerving done subdued changes, from mini injuries akin to insubstantial cuts and mini spores of infection, to nan vile and uncouth beingness of Quaid's Harvey (you've ne'er seen a man eat shrimp cocktail successful specified a disgusting manner). However, while its much overt transformations are awesome feats of applicable filmmaking, they're seldom viscerally effective, playing for illustration lesser versions of scenes and images from other, amended movies.

Numerous elements reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining look on-screen, from patterned carpets and reddish bath walls, each nan measurement to circumstantial shots, but these evident callbacks service small thematic intent beyond recognition. While immoderate films are invoked for much circumstantial reasons, for illustration nan assemblage scary of Brian Yuzna's cult horror-comedy Society and Ridley Scott's sci-fi slasher Alien, others for illustration Hitchcock's Psycho go reference points without clear purpose, arsenic though Fargeat were attempting to simultaneously salary homage to Hollywood's male-centric, female-focused scary canon while defying and deconstructing it. Unfortunately, she seldom succeeds, and her comparisons extremity up mounting a precocious barroom that nan movie cannot clear. 

A major, self-aware constituent of The Substance is its position of Sue, seen arsenic a virginal temptress by nan appropriately named Harvey and different antheral executives. She's often changeable for illustration nan female taxable of a brew commercial: glossy, needlessly hyper-sexualized, and simultaneously cardinal to nan allure while being disposable to nan product. And while this artistic takes clasp erstwhile she's connected set, successful beforehand of workplace cameras, it's Fargeat's camera that films her this way, a position that isn't tethered to that of nan media aliases antheral onlookers wrong nan film. This attack isn't inherently problematic, but there's nary improvement to it.

Beyond a point, gratuitous shots of Margaret Qualley's crotch and hips are conscionable that: gratuitous. The connection of "this is really nan world sees women" is clear nan first, second, and 3rd clip this framing appears, but astatine 140 minutes successful length, nan movie's deficiency of immoderate existent artistic exploration aliases refutation becomes numbing and boring. The scenes that beryllium extracurricular of this mounting don't meaningfully diverge from it either. (Benjamin Kracun's lighting is often excessively level and over-lit for Fargeat's ocular creation to present melodramatic dimensions).

Unfortunately, The Substance lacks meaningful psychological exploration too. Its inability to descend its teeth into immoderate 1 thought stems from a surface-level attack to astir each of them. Like pinch her debut feature, Revenge, Fargeat's subversion of nan "male gaze" is constricted to astir peripheral reference of what is, astatine slightest successful academia, a captious analytical concept. Spend capable clip successful online movie circles, and you mightiness spot nan "male gaze" reduced simply to an objectifying lens pinch men down nan camera, aliases worse, to nan broad aestheticization of nan female form, which wholly ignores nan origins of nan word (popularized by feminist theorist Laura Mulvey) arsenic a foundational psychological model rooted successful nan useful of Freud and Lacan.

The conception of "gaze," successful its original meaning, surely involves nan pleasures of looking, but it besides goes acold beyond this act. At nan costs of being reductive — though you can publication Mulvey's effort for yourself — it besides wrestles pinch an audience's projection and identification, and though it uses ocular fetishization arsenic its fulcrum, isn't needfully constricted by who is down aliases successful beforehand of nan camera. If anything, The Substance often fails to face aliases moreover relationship for these notions of cinematic "gaze" successful their totality, because it isn't willing successful nan move betwixt Elizabeth and Sue, whether they're meant to beryllium chopped beings aliases parts of a azygous whole.

Sue, though she has corporeal form, is wholly a spectral projection. She's a imagination of some men's desires and Elizabeth's desires. But successful crafting this circumstantial sci-fi premise, Fargeat excessively often separates them, nullifying her ain play successful nan process. She allows for small (if any) existent confrontation of Sue's creation arsenic an enactment of embodying nan thought of gaze, aliases cinematic fetish, fto unsocial aesthetically refuting it. Elizabeth whitethorn beryllium afforded nan chance to reckon pinch nan deterioration of her ain beingness form, but her fantasies and eventual contempt for Sue are ne'er afloat allowed manifest arsenic self-contempt — a cardinal constituent successful immoderate communicative astir nan psychology of beauty standards, and nan ways successful which male-dominated nine forces women to spot themselves. 

The camera, though it reflects nan measurement immoderate phantom 3rd statement mightiness seizure Sue, seldom affords Elizabeth a individual gaze, an inward gaze, successful a measurement that astatine slightest depicts her imaginable for autonomy, moreover if The Substance is reticent to assistance her immoderate successful bid to make its malformed point. Some person compared nan movie to past Cannes Palme d’Or victor Titane by Julia Ducournau, which is simply a acold superior film, but nan gulf betwixt nan 2 is illustrative. Where Ducournau's biomechanical transformations some bespeak and deepen its characters, Fargeat simply uses metamorphosis arsenic an hold of that which is already self-evident done crippled and performance, resulting successful an operatic climax that, while innovative successful its applicable execution, lacks genuinely transgressive flair.

Fargeat's midnight assemblage scary stylings whitethorn person struck a chord pinch nan Cannes assemblage — possibly arsenic a novelty successful a title lineup filled pinch straightforward dramas — but its style has nary existent substance. 

The Substance opens successful theaters Sept. 20.

UPDATE: Sep. 18, 2024, 4:58 p.m. EDT The Substance was reviewed retired of Cannes. This reappraisal was first published connected June 3, 2024, and has been updated to bespeak theatrical availability.