A blood-soaked dystopian satire of the male gaze, The Substance takes a VERY graphic approach to speaking truth to power.
Starring Hollywood’s highest paid actress Demi Moore, The Substance tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show.
Unceremoniously sacked as she hits her 50th birthday, Elisabeth discovers a black-market drug which can create a ‘younger, more beautiful, more perfect’ version of its user.
The drug’s strict conditions are gruesome however, and Elisabeth’s need for youth to sustain her career talks directly to Hollywood’s abandoning of actresses as they age.
But it’s The Substance’s ‘deliciously unhinged and dread-inducing’ levels of gore that have really commanded the critics’ attention, with one describing it as ‘a shocking assault on the senses’.
A blood-soaked dystopian satire of the male gaze, The Substance takes a VERY graphic approach to speaking truth to power – but it’s the film’s ‘deliciously unhinged and dread-inducing’ levels of gore that have really commanded the critics’ attention
Starring Hollywood’s highest paid actress Demi Moore, The Substance tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show
The film sees Elisabeth dealt a devastating blow on her birthday when she is fired by ruthless executive, played by Dennis Quaid.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Elisabeth learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to turn the user into a ‘younger, more beautiful, more perfect’ version of them self.
Though Elisabeth initially tosses the phone number in the bin, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that Elisabeth and her better self Sue (Margaret Qualley) must trade places every seven days.
So for one week at a time, she is forced again to live as her 50-year-old self.
But the allure of youth and a made-for-TV butt proves too strong to resist that she tests the boundaries to see what the worst that can happen is if she squeezes an extra day or two in.
The Evening Standard’s Nick Howells described it as the ‘best and maddest film of the year so far’ as he gave it five stars.
‘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,’ he wrote.
Unceremoniously sacked as she hits her 50th birthday, Elisabeth discovers a black-market drug which can create a ‘younger, more beautiful, more perfect’ version of its user
The film sees Elisabeth dealt a devastating blow on her birthday when she is fired by ruthless executive, played by Dennis Quaid
‘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.’
Meanwhile Krysta Fauria of AP described it as ‘disgusting and deranged’ as she wrote: ‘The film’s deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarising 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.’
For The Mail, Brian Viner wrote of the film’s ‘snapping, bursting, oozing and squelching’ in his three-star review.
‘There’s plenty of popping in The Substance,’ he said. ‘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.
The one rule of using the drug to follow is that Elisabeth and her better self Sue (Margaret Qualley) must trade places every seven days
But the allure of youth and a made-for-TV butt proves too strong to resist that she tests the boundaries to see what the worst that can happen is if she squeezes an extra day or two in
‘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.’
RTE’s Bren Murphy added: ‘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.’
However two critics weren’t entirely sure its critique of the male gaze had landed.
Financial Times journalist Danny Leigh said: ‘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.
The Evening Standard’s Nick Howells described it as the ‘best and maddest film of the year so far’ as he gave it five stars
‘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.’
While Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent noted: ‘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.’
