Time: 140 Minutes
Age Rating: R16 – Violence, offensive language, sexual material & content that may disturb
Cast:
Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle
Margaret Qualley as Sue
Dennis Quaid as Harvey
Director: Coralie Fargeat

The Substance was my fifth and final movie of the NZIFF, and it was the closing movie of the festival. I knew very little about the film, just that it was a horror movie starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, and it was receiving high praise from the Cannes Film Festival. Saying that it took me off guard was an understatement, it was a perfectly bold film to end the festival on. 

I went into The Substance nearly blind, I didn’t even know the extent of the insane setup, and that really enhanced my experience. So I will do my best not to reveal too much about the movie, especially compared to some other reviews. Something clear right from the start is that it’s not a subtle or restrained movie at all and doesn’t leave anything to the imagination, and that’s even before it gets to the body horror. As a satire and commentary, The Substance is very obvious with what its about. There are plenty of themes that can be seen here with the obsession of beauty and self image, and how society treats the female body (especially when it comes to those of an older age), and how it can cause people to push their bodies to the breaking point to hold onto their beauty and youth. It is a surprisingly funny movie, the (largely dark) comedy fits very well in this otherwise intense movie, in fact some of the comedy comes from just how insane it can get. It’s such a bizarre and unpredictable movie that it locked me in from beginning to end, even in its slower moments around the halfway point. I won’t go into detail, but The Substance is over the top absurd, especially with its premise, which does lead to a lot of surprising camp. I was left stunned with how things progressed; it escalated things to such extreme degrees. While watching, I was going to raise the runtime as a criticism, it certainly feels quite long at 2 hours and 20 minutes. My experience was that at every moment where it felt like it was about to end, it just kept going. This ended up working in its favour however; just when you think that the movie has reached its maximum point, 10 minutes later, it reveals that it really hasn’t. The last 20 minutes is where everything really ramps up to unbelievable levels and has to be seen to be believed. 

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley deliver fearless, committed and empathetic lead performances, which compliment and contrast each other wonderfully, and rank as possibly the best of their careers. Dennis Quaid is also a scene stealer and fantastic as an unsubtly loathsome and grotesque producer (who’s not too subtly named Harvey), with the performance of a cartoonish Looney Toons villain and presentation of a David Lynch nightmare figure. 

I was very intrigued when I learned that this movie came from Coralie Fargeat, the director of Revenge, which was a great movie. With The Substance, she has taken things to a whole other level. It is a visually gorgeous film, incredibly shot and with great production design, I really loved the use of colours. The editing and sound design is really top notch, and helped make particular scenes even more intense and uncomfortable. The practical effects and the makeup are absolutely amazing and outstanding, truly award worthy. The body horror is absurdly grotesque, and to convey my point, it’s one of the rare times in a horror movie where I actually looked away from the screen multiple times, it was that full on. Finally, the movie is accompanied by a great and suitably moody score from Raffertie.

The Substance is an audacious, gloriously unhinged, grotesque, darkly campy, and unforgettable body horror film, fantastically directed, and with excellent performances from Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. It’s one of the best body horror movies out there, and one of my favourite films of the year.