The Substance

Demi Moore has been alternately shamed and celebrated for her appearance throughout four decades in Hollywood. Audiences and executives have always wanted it both ways: to both leer at the female form and put down the actresses who bare all in their performances, rarely giving a second thought to the implications of such thinking. Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore feature allows Moore to take ownership of herself in a way no prior role has, with enough body horror along the way to make David Cronenberg nod in approval.

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After aging out of her acting career and fitness empire the literal moment she turns 50, the aptly named Elisabeth Sparkle receives a mysterious signal for a treatment known only as The Substance: an injection that splits you in two, with a younger version of yourself emerging for a week at a time. Your original body doesn’t disappear, but rather goes dormant while being fed a milky substance intravenously. The rules demand that you switch back every seven days without exception, and the instructions come with an ominous warning: “Remember that you are one.”

The youthful doppelganger who names herself Sue is portrayed by Margaret Qualley, a dead ringer for a twentysomething Moore despite actually being the daughter of another screen icon (Andie MacDowell). The initial transformation is like a cross between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Fly: Elisabeth literally sheds her skin, cocoon-like, for her younger self to violently emerge. Her original body is sewn up by Sue and left on the bathroom floor, the last vestige of a self to whom she’s reluctant to return immediately upon seeing it. If this sequence turns your stomach, turn back while you still can: The Substance is gloriously ghastly, with more blood, gore, and viscera than its hard-R rating could possibly prepare you for.

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It’s also appropriately sleek and stylized, with an ‘80s aesthetic evoking the decade's superficial supremacy so effectively you’ll forget the film is set in the present until you see an occasional cellphone. And while the world it depicts may not have much substance, the film itself does. That’s in part to a bevy of influences that Fargeat has no shame wearing on her sleeve; by the time the credits roll, you’ll have been reminded of everything from Carrie to The Elephant Man. The Substance could hardly be less subtle, but, well these aren’t exactly subtle times we find ourselves in.

"Remember that you are one."

Moore and Qualley play off one another brilliantly despite how rarely they actually interact onscreen; neither actress has ever been given a meatier role, nor have either of them ever been better. These are career-best performances from both, with Moore in particular making us all realize that, for one reason or another, we’ve been looking at her the wrong way all these years.

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The more comfortable in her own skin Sue becomes, the more she comes to resent Elisabeth — and the further apart these two halves of the same self grow. The Substance maintains a unified vision throughout, somehow feeling like more than the sum of its parts despite the fracture at its core. A body divided against itself cannot stand, nor can the center hold when it’s splitting in two. But unlike its dual protagonists, The Substance is utterly unafraid of being wholly, unapologetically itself. We should all be so lucky.