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Poster: The Substance/MUBI
The Substance is a body horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. After winning the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling (and being snubbed for every other category), I thought it would be a good time to unpack the film in all its gory. I mean glory. Spoilers ahead.
Image: The Substance/MUBI
The film follows Elisabeth Sparkle (played by Demi Moore), a former Hollywood star who is fired for being “too old”. In her desperation, she is driven to take a mysterious product known as “The Substance”. The result is a horrifying transformation sequence which I’m probably not allowed to describe, from which Sue (played by Margaret Qualley) is birthed. Sue is described as a “better” version of Elisabeth — younger, more “beautiful”, more “perfect”.
Sue is Elisabeth’s chance to relive her glory days. However, there is a catch — Elisabeth and Sue must take turns to exist. So long as the two “switch” every 7 days, all will go swimmingly.
However, Sue feels that her life is “perfect”, and 7 days just isn’t enough. She wants more, and Elisabeth’s body bears the consequence. At first, Sue extends her deadline by a mere few minutes. The result? Elisabeth’s finger begins to rot. As Sue begins to steal more and more time from Elisabeth, when she finally switches back, well…
Image: The Substance/MUBI
This was the last straw. Elisabeth decides to terminate Sue, but immediately regrets it. In her attempt to reverse what she’s done, she accidentally reanimates her, leading to the very first scene where both Sue and Elisabeth are both active. This is the exact moment where the movie goes off the rails, because Sue immediately decides to brutally murder Elisabeth.
Image: The Substance/MUBI
This scene led to a lot of online discourse about whether Sue and Elisabeth are two different people, or just one person in two bodies. The answer is given in the film’s trailer: “The one and only thing not to forget? You. Are. One. You can’t escape from yourself.”
Elisabeth’s self-image is fragmented into two — all her insecurities are borne by herself, while Sue represents her idealised self. When Sue kills Elisabeth, she is literally beating herself up. This lack of subtlety is pervasive in the film.
Another point of contention was how Sue kept stealing more time from Elisabeth, leading to her body warping and distorting into a haggardly state. If Sue and Elisabeth were the same person, why was she inflicting such harm upon herself? That state of irrational thinking describes body dysmorphia and its consequences. In wanting to be perfect, Sue forgets that she IS Elisabeth — she forgets to care for herself, she rejects herself in the ultimate way, and this leads to her downfall.
After killing Elisabeth, Sue finally feels at peace. She is now the only one who gets to exist, so she happily gets ready to host The New Year’s Eve Show.
“You can’t escape from yourself.” Just before the show, Sue’s body literally begins to fall apart — her teeth fall out of their sockets, her nails splinter off, her earlobes detach. In her desperation, she administers “The Substance” again (even though it’s explicitly stated to be single-use only).
“Please give me a better version of myself,” she chants, as she injects “The Substance” into her veins. The result? Monstro Elisasue. When she was revealed, the audience at my theatre audibly gasped. Monstro Elisasue dolls herself up and leaves the house, seemingly satisfied with her appearance — something that Elisabeth couldn’t bring herself to do.
Image: The Substance/MUBI
It appears as though Monstro Elisasue has finally achieved self-acceptance. Yet when she shows up to The New Year’s Eve Show, the audience find her revolting. They point and yell at her, calling her a “monster”. The irony was impossible to miss — although Monstro Elisasue finally loved herself, the people around her weren’t willing to let her be.
The final scene of the movie was so over-the-top gory that it stopped being scary, and just started being funny. It closes with Monstro Elisasue’s body disintegrating into a bloody mess on the Hollywood Boardwalk, which is immediately wiped away the next day, leaving no trace behind.
The Substance deeply disturbed me. When I got home from the cinema, I was scared to be alone. Not because I was afraid that Monstro Elisasue would appear behind me, but because the film showed the horrors we are capable of inflicting upon ourselves.
The confusion over Elisabeth and Sue’s relationship despite its explicit explanation in the film was really interesting to me. We see Sue repeatedly harm Elisabeth, and the cognitive dissonance evoked makes us question whether they are truly one. Yet, we as humans are no strangers to being unkind towards ourselves.
“The Substance” is real — it’s fillers, it’s botox, it’s crash diets, it’s Ozempic. It’s anything people use because they hate the way their bodies look. I walked out of the theatre mortified, but with a newfound appreciation for the body that I have.