The Substance Horror Film:The Brilliantly Crazy Story That Could Win an Osca

The Substance is a body horror film that is revolutionizing the genre thanks to a gritty plot, excellent performances and masterful direction.

The Substance horror film, directed by talented French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, has five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The other four nominations are: Best Actress, Demi Moore; Best Director, Coralie Fargeat, Best Makeup and Best Original Screenplay.

If this Sunday, March 2, The Substance wins the Oscar for Best Picture, it would be the second horror film to achieve the feat, as The Silence of the Lambs has been the only horror story to achieve that honor so far.

Elisabeth Sparkle, a 50-year-old former Hollywood icon, finds herself in a battle against the relentless tide of aging and the entertainment industry's obsession with youth in The Substance.

After being unceremoniously dropped from her long-standing aerobics television show due to her age, Elisabeth is driven by a desperate need to reclaim her lost vitality. Her journey leads her to a clandestine black-market drug called The Substance, which claims to unlock a younger, idealized version of oneself through the manipulation of cellular DNA. Upon taking the serum, Elisabeth's body generates a youthful doppelgänger named Sue, played by Margaret Qualley. The two women must alternate their consciousness every week, leaving the dormant body in a state of unconsciousness, sustained only by intravenous nourishment.

As Sue's star rises, Elisabeth's career spirals downward, prompting a haunting exploration of identity, self-worth, and the societal demands placed on women to uphold a youthful facade. The film tackles heavy themes of body dysmorphia, self-hatred, and addiction, employing striking metaphors to illustrate the psychological and physical consequences of the relentless pursuit of eternal beauty.

##A deadly invitation

Elisabeth receives the invitation to experience an improved version of herself, which will reveal to her that all her talent, belittled for considering her too old, can become her greatest strength. In other words, the enigmatic private procedure to which you are invited to participate will bring out the best of your being, using your current experience and your original state of consciousness.

The script effectively keeps its secrets, and when it reveals that the previous idea is cruelly accurate, the film heads towards original and brutal territories. Elisabeth's "new self" is an entity that arises from her body, generated by the properties of the substance, and emerges from her back. The director manages to get the previously established context to make the horror scenes, although explicit, cruel but not arbitrary. Much of the substance has the ability to make sense of the most extravagant visual decisions, making them understandable within their context. Nothing seems out of place or a concession to revulsion, an achievement the director achieves in several of the film's most awkward moments.

##A phenomenal perspective

In the first moments of The Substance, it is shown how Elizabeth is brutally discarded by the entertainment industry upon reaching the age of 50. We have already seen in the cinema numerous narratives illustrating how Hollywood beauty standards sweep away women who have dedicated their lives to acting, but this is just the beginning of the plot of The Substance.

The film delves, through extensive sequences without dialogue, into Elizabeth's intimate life: in her home, in her bathroom, in the reflection she observes in the mirror and even in the deepest part of her being. Her deepest message is revealed: it is not only the entertainment industry that rejects Elizabeth's slightly aging image, but it is she herself who belittles herself.

This is crudely manifested when she is preparing for a date with an old classmate, a moment that could be considered the emotional climax of the film. Immersed in her reflection and haunted by the image of Sue (her younger version), she desperately tries to adjust her makeup and wardrobe, but she never manages to feel satisfied.

She plunges into a nervous breakdown and decides to aggressively shred her makeup and hairstyle, thus ruining her chances of attending the appointment. With this scene, Fargeat highlights the tense relationship that the protagonist maintains with her own body, even before her final transformation takes place. This allows her to address another of the key issues raised by the film: the loss of control.

Despite being aware of the serious repercussions that this will entail, Elisabeth is willing to do whatever it takes to stay in Sue's skin (her younger version) and not in her own. Thus, the substance becomes a satire on beauty standards, but Fargeat complicates the narrative and creates a game that reveals that, sometimes, the villain and the victim are the same person.

##An impressive immersive experience

Coralie Fargeat understands that the audience wants to experience what is happening as closely as possible, pushing this resource to the limit of discomfort. In the lunch sequence where Harvey (Dennis Quaid), a misogynistic television producer, informs Elisabeth about his dismissal from the show, the camera gets so close that we can observe how the shrimp he consumes turn into a mass in his mouth, escaping through the corners.

An overlap of the restaurant's music and the sound of the cutlery is perceived, along with the noise generated by his mouth when chewing and swallowing the soft meat covered with sauce. Thus, the film not only recounts Elisabeth's dismissal, but immerses us in her terrifying experience in a very realistic way.

An additional example of how the director weaves her narrative is presented when Sue makes her debut on the aerobics program previously hosted by Elisabeth. In this scene, the camera focuses for several minutes on specific shots of Sue's body, while a version of the 2000s hit "Pump It Up!". The intention of Fargeat is not to replicate the male gaze on the female body, but to exaggerate it in order to criticize it and transform it into a great irony.

##A woman's view of body horror

The film manifests its true intensity the instant Elisabeth opts to inject herself with the substance. We watch her contorting herself on the floor of her bathroom, and in a close-up shot, the pupil of one of her eyes is doubled. Finally, the skin and flesh on his back opens up to free Sue, his younger version. This scene, which required 15 days of filming, is just the first course of an extensive banquet of more than an hour of grotesque sequences, which explore the fear and disgust that the human body and its transformations can generate. Therefore, it is classified as a body horror movie.

Fargeat is not a pioneer in the genre, since she is inspired by great masters like David Cronenberg, but she does take the genre in new directions. The deformations that Elisabeth experiences are not arbitrary; they are reflections on femininity and the male gaze. It is no coincidence that the monster Elisasue (the fusion of Elisabeth and Sue) expels a breast hanging from the umbilical cord at the end of the film.

Every scene is full of symbolism. Fargeat herself has mentioned that she wanted that monster to represent a Picasso of male expectations. Body horror can be a truly powerful tool of expression for female directors, the filmmaker has said on several occasions.

##Real monsters

The entity that gives life to Elisabeth's body, Sue, has the potential to be as successful and powerful as the woman she comes from in her youth. It is at this moment that the substance reaches its maximum splendor. Coralie Fargeat establishes a fusion between symmetrical planes that convey the feeling that beauty encompasses the entire world. At the same time, he uses very close-up shots to illustrate how beauty reaches its peak and subsequently transforms into something monstrous.

The film is so exaggerated and uncomfortable that, at times, it is difficult to distinguish between the pleasure that Elisabeth's new fragmented existence promises and extreme cruelty. On this occasion, the director presents wounds, exposed viscera and deaths in a very graphic way, but without sacrificing a certain aesthetic sense. The play plays with his own interpretation of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, exploring the lights and shadows that every human being harbors. But, beyond that, he delves into the need to satisfy his darkest and most greedy instincts. This combination is, in most cases, frightening and, in others, ironic. A balance that the director manages to maintain without ever losing her peculiar sense of humor.

The challenge of assembling all the pieces of a story and delivering an outcome that meets expectations is no easy task. Coralie Fargeat partially succeeds, and although in the third act the film loses much of the frenetic energy that characterized it, it is still surprising and terrifying. With a final scene that will be recorded in the history of horror cinema, The substance fulfills, at least, its main promises: to tell a scary story adapted to a generation obsessed with physical appearance.

##Master performances

Elisabeth finds herself in the midst of desolation and discovers what seems to be the solution to her longing for eternal beauty and youth: a strange substance that will divide her into two beings, a younger, beautiful and perfect version of herself, and the other, the one she has always been.

This game evokes a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, perverse and strange, or a human version of Fiona from Shrek: "By day I'm one, by night I'm another." What was predictable soon becomes apparent. The young version, played by Margaret Qualley, craves control, even if that means devouring the original version.

The conflict between the two versions of his being contains, perhaps, the true horror of the story. The obsessions, the irrational fear of growing old, of being relegated, of losing fame, are taking shape, becoming a moral avalanche ready to wipe out everything.

The central question lies not only in what you would be willing to sacrifice to never grow old, but in the dark desires that underlie that answer.

The author does not hesitate to present the intense struggle of a woman with herself, but in this context, the masculine side does not come out well either. Dennis Quaid offers a disgusting portrait of an unscrupulous producer, accompanied by other characters who see in women, even the most beautiful, mere disposable objects.

The endless spiral of lies and vanities culminates in an ending that may seem excessive, since it moves away from reality, but it is full of grotesque spectacle. However, it may be excessive to prolong a premise that had already made it clear that it would have a tragic outcome.

The substance in question resembles a magical elixir, longed for by mankind since time immemorial. The film offers us a dark reflection on the desire for the impossible, challenging nature and one's own divinity. Its approach is original, with a magnetic spell, which enchants everyone.