Evening Standard
Nick Howells writes: ‘The Substance is the best and maddest film of the year (so far). Caveat: as long as you like a full portion of body horror and are happy to be spattered head to toe in blood and mutant body parts.
‘It all climaxes way beyond where you could dare imagine it might end, in a riotously hilarious torrent of blood the likes of which you might never have witnessed before.
‘A sledgehammer parable for the Ozempic generation, The Substance, with all confidence, is an instant classic.’
The Independent
Clarisse Loughrey writes: ‘The Substance’s final stretch descends into a full-blown, blood-fountain homage to gross-out cult classics like Brian Yuzna’s 1989 horror film Society.
‘It turns the body into a public spectacle and invites the audience in, a little too eagerly, to gawk at what has elsewhere been presented as such intimate, secret disgust.
Daily Mail
Brian Viner writes: ‘There’s plenty of popping in The Substance. Popping, in fact, might be the least of it, alongside snapping, bursting, oozing and squelching, in a grotesque body-horror satire that isn’t for the squeamish but might be for the ticklish, if you can find the funny side.
‘Yet for all its dystopian grisliness, Oscar Wilde would have recognised this story, which echoes The Picture Of Dorian Gray, but of course has particular resonance in today’s looks-obsessed society.’
Financial Times
Danny Leigh writes: ‘The longer the movie plays, the more you find other flaws. How gross beauty standards are, we are told, while for reasons that would be a spoiler, also being invited to shudder at elderly women’s bodies.
‘A satire of the male gaze this filled with young women twerking, they said, can look a lot like what it is meant to be satirising.’
AP
Krysta Fauria writes: ‘The film’s deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.’
‘What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie.’
RTE
Bren Murphy writes: ‘Coralie Fargeat, the French director of 2017’s powerfully violent Revenge, returns with The Substance, and when it comes to delivering more shocking visceral images with a message, she’s not holding back.
‘Darkly funny, intense, and extremely graphic, this is a shocking assault on the senses, in a good way – on second thoughts, in a masterful way.’
