Ow wow, that’s so stupid that I can’t be possibly the first one to come up with that joke.
No spoilers this time.
TL;DR: Possibly my favorite movie of the year, but I also did find certain things hilarious while everyone else in the theatre seemed to think it was just shocking, so your mileage may vary.
For reference for the young people out there, in my teen years Demi Moore was the highest-paid female actor in the world. While she is clearly talented, those movies were very much built around the appeal of her body rather than her as an actor, so they were just bad, which didn’t help her career in the long run. So, now she is a working actor, but leading roles are just not there anymore.
The instigating incident is her character, Elizabeth, overhearing a producer talk about her age, let’s say, in a very negative manner. She is just seen as two old to continue with her exercise show. She learns about The Substance, which lets her continue her life as a younger, better version of herself. However, they need to share a life, one week for each of them before switching.
Now, there’s a lot of things in the movie where you could ask how a character just knows how to do something, but here’s the answer: It doesn’t matter. The movie wouldn’t happen otherwise. The movie is not about that.
So, this movie is perfect for Moore. What it is about, as I read it, is the dangers around us putting pressure on women to look a certain way. I mean, how many male actors just keep on trucking despite their age, while the roles for women just start to dry out after a certain point in their lives? The situation seems to be getting better as people like Cate Blanchett seem to be enjoying a longer career, but at the same time, the pressures regarding their body seem to have no extended to men in this era of superhero movies. Keeping yourself in that condition is just not healthy. By being beautiful now, you are selling out your future.
The Substance just takes the horrors of this to a whole new level. I wasn’t expecting the level of body horror the movie has, but it is great and often funny. However, that’s when it gets fantastical. The real life “body horror” I do find sad. Elizabeth is not happy with her body. She is in her 60s and should be allowed to age, but in her chosen profession, that is just not an option if she wants to keep working.
The movie is weirdly in your face. It often gets close and manages to put you into the scene with the camera work. There’s one scene early on where the aforementioned producer is in the toilet, urinating, and the camera is placed right up to his face while he is shouting into his cellphone. That gives the scene a very unique feel and tells the story of the movie in an interesting way.
It’s actually kind of weird how popular this movie is. It’s gory in a very extreme way (although usually it owuld also be categorized under fantasy gore or something), it definitely qualifies as high-concept in a way that feels like it would be hard to swallow for most people and I could see some people finding the way the camera is used off-putting. Personally all of this is just a plus and it’s good to see that the movie has found an audience, even if that audience is not huge. It is already the highest-grossing movie put out by MUBI in the US (which isn’t saying much) and probably still has mileage left. (Also, if a movie like this does interest you, go out and look for a code to get a month or few free and try it out. You can find them on various videos on YouTube, such as those from Broey Deschanel and Yhara zayd. You can also just get codes for singular movies from your friends, if you know someone who has MUBI.)