Oh boy. Really crazy horror movie. I actually really liked it. It’s a horror movie in the subgenre of “body horror” and is a serious critique on modern trends and objectification and unhealthy beauty trends for women. It also touches on age, and how women are perceived as less attractive when becoming older, which in my thought was saying something about how society PERCEIVES older women. It can be viewed as a feminism related film.
It starts with an older woman named Elizabeth who stars in a dance routine show. She stumbles across an ad on tv for a product called “the Substance”. After hearing her boss trash talk her when she accidentally walks into the men’s bathroom and then gets word from mouth they’re going to replace her, and additionally after getting into a rather horrible car crash because she’s staring at a billboard featuring a much younger woman… it’s no doubt she goes and calls to pick up the Substance product right away. The product warns her— “You are one. You are the matrix. You and your other self cannot be separated.” (Paraphrasing the exact dialogue from the movie.)
She follows the routine with the injections for a while, until inevitably it goes horribly wrong. she starts bleeding out of her ear, having multiple throw up’s where she either throws up blood or a neon green liquid, her finger grows to look like she’s 100 years older (like not just an old woman’s finger but like a super old woman, a witch’s finger), she looses a tooth in one scene (actually this is at the end of the movie), and ultimately tries to kill her older self as her younger self, but this won’t work because they’re CONNECTED… she’s the same person. Ultimately if she kills one version of herself, she kills HERself. Ultimately she has a choice to abort, and terminate the process, but she chooses not to in ultimate obsession with keeping the younger version of herself purely for aesthetic ideals. So she keeps going, ultimately to her demise at the end. But I’m leaving the end of the film up for you to see. No spoilers here… haha
Also Demi Moore is an excellent actress and I really enjoyed her performance. I’ve never seen other movies with her in it I don’t think to my knowledge, so I should look into her other films she’s played in. The other actresses did a great job too.
From a horror standpoint, it definitely made me nervous or uncomfortable esp. with the medical, blood and body horror elements and therefore did its job on being a horror movie. From a storytelling standpoint, it was pretty good. I had a bit of concern on the ending which could be interpreted differently depending on who you talk to. It, funny enough, as a horror movie, made me felt like I was about to cry some parts. That’s probably because some parts were rather depressing, for her mental state as she went thru these weird moments of going back & forth to young and old- and it was esp. sad and heart wrenching for me too as a woman myself who feels pressured by beauty standards and a stable discomfort/isolation of my body as well. But some parts actually got me to laugh or chuckle a bit so I give it points for being a funny type of horror movie with some clever parts. But BOY it was gross some times, lots of weird stuff you wouldn’t expect at the most unexpected moments. (The teeth part I had to look away a bit.)
I consider it dark comedy a tad, to be honest. It’s very much a horror movie, but it has some dark humor moments.
Now does it effectively make a impactful comment on bad, unhealthy, obsessive & repetitive beauty standards? How much they’re enforced and shoved down the throats of many women? Especially growing up in a modern, image saturated society/time? Where everything is based on looks & talent? I think it actually does make an effective statement on that. there are areas in which they could have told any specific scene differently to show some additional perspective but I think they did a good and well-thought job with addressing it. I mean heck, a lot of films nowadays wouldn’t really add this extra layer of commentary on the problems with rigid beauty standards.
I also think the cinematography was generally really well thought out and quite good. Beautiful even, esp with the attention to detail in the things like the fish eye lens when her rather obnoxious boss is talking to her, the close ups on things like the bottle of liquids and the people’s faces and eyeballs and such. It’s really interesting how they made an effort to showcase certain things especially in important scenes, almost like those specific things had deeper symbolic meaning towards the overall message.
Anyway thanks! I’ll just say thank you for listening to my review of The Substance film - great movie and I’d give it like 8 stars. I’d love to watch more horror movies with a feminism twist (JENNIFER’S BODY BRO!)…like, as you know from my bio and past blog entries I’ve already deeply enjoyed watching indie horror film Jennifer’s Body. (It’s also kind of dark humor in a way and definitely has a feminism element.) I’ve seen it two times and LOVED every second of it. It’s a great film as well. This The Substance film may come second after Jennifer’s Body. Both are very good and interesting to watch and if I find any more movies like this, I’ll be sure to review them to the best of my ability. Anyways, see ya!
Tinyapples <3
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