{"id":4159,"date":"2024-09-22T03:56:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T03:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4159"},"modified":"2024-10-19T21:46:40","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T01:46:40","slug":"the-substance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/22\/the-substance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Substance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Substance<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mubi\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 140 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violent content, graphic nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Coralie Fargeat\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Raffertie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Benjamin Kracun\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 20, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t usually pay much attention to nudity in movies anymore. I did when I was a hormone-charged teenager, but didn\u2019t we all? I sat up and took notice of it in The Substance<\/strong>. It\u2019s not that it turned me on; it was more out of admiration for Demi Moore. The actress has always been bold and uninhibited. In 1991, she posed naked for the cover of Vanity Fair while pregnant with her second child. Now at 61 (she sure doesn\u2019t look it!), she bares her body for all to see. Most actresses stop doing nude scenes once they hit middle age and become self-conscious about their aging bodies. That doesn\u2019t appear to be a concern with Demi. YOU GO, GIRL!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Written and directed by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat (Revenge), the satirical body horror-thriller The Substance<\/strong> is insane as in insanely grotesque and insanely bloody. It bears the influences of Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Frank Henenlotter, David Lynch and Brian De Palma. It\u2019s easily the craziest movie I\u2019ve seen all year. It\u2019s also f***ing brilliant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore) used to be one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. That was when she was young and beautiful. Now that she\u2019s just turned 50, the industry no longer has any use for her. By way of a birthday present, she\u2019s fired from her gig as a fitness instructor on a morning talk show by a creep of an executive (Quaid, The Big Easy) who wants somebody younger and hotter. Not only that, she gets into a car accident while watching her billboard get torn down. That\u2019s when her life takes an interesting turn.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Elizabeth learns of a serum simply called \u201cThe Substance\u201d. It\u2019s sort of a fountain of youth, sort of. When injected, it creates a younger version of the user. Desperate to be desirable and employable again, she injects herself with the neon green stuff and gives birth to her younger self out of a slit in her back. That younger self is Sue (Qualley, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). She and Elizabeth are \u201cone\u201d meaning they share the same consciousness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Naturally, there are specific rules governing the use and effectiveness of The Substance. Elizabeth\/Sue must inject herself daily with a \u201cstabilizer\u201d. Also, and most importantly, the two have to switch places every seven days with one out in the world while the other rests in an unconscious state. There are no exceptions to the rules. Violating them causes irreparable side effects.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sue wastes no time making a name for herself starting with taking over Elizabeth\u2019s old job. She becomes an instant star and loves it. It doesn\u2019t make Elizabeth feel any better. She feels despondent and even more insecure. Sue quickly gets addicted to fame and all the admiration she\u2019s receiving. This causes her to break the cardinal rule which leads to dire consequences.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After all the garbage I sat through these past few weeks, it\u2019s great to see a film that has something on its mind. The Substance<\/strong> is the thinking person\u2019s horror film. It has a lot to say about ageism and our society\u2019s obsession with youth and beauty. Fargeat takes it to bizarre extremes by turning her tale into a warped version of The Picture of Dorian Gray with Elizabeth suffering the consequences of Sue\u2019s dangerously selfish behavior. The makeup artists do a tremendous job with the film\u2019s more grotesque aspects. Even better, it doesn\u2019t appear to be CGI. It looks like they went old school with latex and prosthetics.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The look of The Substance<\/strong> is equally awesome. The bold, bright color scheme perfectly contrasts the hideous goings-on. The production design by Stanislas Reydellet heightens the film\u2019s surreal reality with beautifully composed shots. The scenes in the overlong TV studio hallway immediately bring to mind The Shining (1980) with the distinctive carpet design. Other scenes have a sterile feel similar to Kubrick\u2019s style. The blood-soaked finale will surely remind viewers of Carrie (1976) with the gory manifestation of female rage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Moore, who hasn\u2019t starred in a movie in ages, delivers a brilliant performance as a no longer relevant celebrity consumed by self-hatred and feelings of inadequacy. She\u2019s desperate to recapture her youth and the popularity she once had. In one especially heartbreaking scene, she has a meltdown in front of a mirror while trying to look good for a date with an old high school acquaintance. No matter how she tries, she can\u2019t make herself look perfect. It speaks to society\u2019s treatment of aging women and the lengths they\u2019ll go to in order to be desirable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Qualley is also quite good as Sue, a perky sort who loves that everyone loves her. She\u2019s sexy and she knows it. So does everybody else. Her show isn\u2019t so much about showing people how to stay fit as it is showing off her perfect body, every part of it. The camera fetishizes her as do the men filming her in action. She embodies vanity perfectly seemingly without realizing it\u2019s one of the seven deadly sins. It helps that she\u2019s quite beautiful herself, but would you expect otherwise from the daughter of Andie MacDowell?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Quaid gives his best performance in years as the grossly exaggerated studio exec obsessed with his new ing\u00e9nue. He\u2019s really more of a caricature than a character. Fargeat and her cinematographer Benjamin Kracun often switch to a fish-eye lens or extreme close-up to make him appear more hilariously grotesque. I\u2019d even say he\u2019s the real monster in The Substance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It goes off the rails near the end, but it\u2019s part of the brilliance of The Substance<\/strong>. Fargeat finely calibrates the weird factor, finding just the right balance between gross-out horror and biting satire. It\u2019s not so much scary as it is disturbing and disturbingly funny. It\u2019s not for everybody. It\u2019s definitely not for mainstream audiences looking for something conventional. The Substance<\/strong> is an unconventional as they come. It\u2019s completely original and worth seeking out. It\u2019ll stay with you for a while, consider yourselves duly warned.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Substance (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mubi\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 140 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violent content, graphic nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Coralie Fargeat\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Raffertie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Benjamin Kracun\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 20, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage. Rating: **** \u00a0I don\u2019t usually pay much attention to nudity in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/The-Substance-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5580,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions\/5580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}