THE SUBSTANCE

FOUR STARS A fading star learns about a substance that will release her best (younger, prettier) self. Will she take it? You bet!

DRAMA HORROR FRANCE English #THESUBSTANCE

Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley

What if you could be someone else for a week? Better yet, what if you could be yourself for a week - a younger, sexier, more confident version of you? The only caveat is that after seven days you have to swap back before, seven days later, you can switch again. Tempted?

That’s the premise of this brutal, darkly comic satire from the sparkling mind of Coralie Fargeat. Blending David Lynch, David Cronenburg, John Carpenter, Leos Carax and Ruben Östlund with a pinch of Hitchcock and Dorian Gray, THE SUBSTANCE lands like the best kind of nightmare. It’s bonkers good.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore in career-best form) is a faded, former Oscar winning star who now has a workout programme on daytime TV. That’s until she gets the call from her odious boss (a career-best Dennis Quaid) who explains with all the calm and charm of a Channel 9 manager that her best days are gone. She’s old, out of shape, no one wants to look at her. Show over, toots. 

An accident leads to hospital leads to The Substance, a synthetic formulation in state-of-the-art packaging that will release the best version of yourself. She takes it - why not - and before you can blink, Margaret Qually has quite literally erupted from the back of Moore’s carcass. Not that Elisabeth is dead, she’s resting until it’s time for her younger self (Sue) to swap positions a week later. Regeneration is the key.

But let's back up a bit here. Demi Moore is old and ugly? Clearly she’s not as any number of linger shots across her naked body will confirm. A repulsively sweaty, shrimp-eating Quaid in fish-eye close up? Yeah, that’s ugly, but he’s a man so he calls the shots. As he does when Sue turns up to claim Elisabeth’s job. Naturally she's hired despite her inexperience and inability to be on set every other week. Why? She’s pretty. Oh, and Quaid's character is named Harvey. So there’s nothing very subtle about the satire underpinning THE SUBSTANCE, but sometimes big targets require big guns.

Naturally matters tip into a death spiral when Sue, who resents the hold Elisabeth has on her time, spends longer and longer out in the world. Elisabeth is none too happy with Sue either and fights back violently across the void. As THE SUBSTANCE turns from an episode of Black Mirror into the blood-drenched comic-horror love-child of Cronenburg and Carpenter, the consequences are catastrophically operatic.

Fargeat turns up the heat with each passing scene and you certainly have to have a taste for the visceral as she skewers Insta-culture, the subjugation of women and the cult of youth (among a long list of targets) with a defending, stomach-churning gusto. Much of this extraordinarily stylish film will be watched through your hands in the knowledge that something more gruesome is about to happen than the gruesome that came before. Certainly the film would be sharper if this blood lust was contained and we arrived at the movie’s bona fide tour de force sooner, or at least before our stamina was truly sapped. For the ending is a marvel (did I say bonkers?), a pity it didn’t come earlier.

Still, THE SUBSTANCE is one hell of a ride that may skate snappily across the surface in search of true, ahem, substance, yet the broad points it wants to make land with all the gut-punching gusto, joy and horror they deserve. Bravo for that.

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