The Substance Movie Review “SPOILER ALERT”

Scroll down for spoilers.🚨 I am going to discuss some of the major plot details and twists on “The Substance.” If you haven’t seen it yet, be warned — the ahead lies some major revelation you don’t want to miss! ⚠️

Imagine waking one morning to find all the fame, beauty, and success she once had slipping through her fingers. That is happening to Elisabeth Sparkle on her 50th birthday. Once a fixture on television, Elisabeth has been summarily thrown off her long-running series. Her crime? Old age. Such a simple and brutal moment of rejection sparks a chilling, twisted parade of terror that will make you wonder if eternal youth is worth the price of your soul.

Elisabeth drives home distracted by a billboard of her self when younger being torn down. In that flash of a second, a car crash turns everything upside down.

At the hospital, a mysterious young nurse shows her the promise of a darker solution to her aging ailments: The Substance, she claims, in a serum that promises to give her youth in the measure she so desperately wants. And then, of course, there's a catch—one that will forever change her life and even her own sense of self.

This serum doesn't just turn the clock back-it splits Elisabeth in two. A younger, perfect version of herself erupts from her back and names herself Sue. The two bodies share one consciousness, but a deadly price must be paid: Elisabeth transfers her mind between these two bodies every seven days lest she completely age out her original self. The once-unified woman has broken into two fractured beings, both growing to despise each other.

Sue flourishes in her new, young life. She becomes the celebrity Elisabeth once was, with rapid promotion up the fame ladder, and takeover of her old TV show.

But all this success brings along a cost. Both Sue and Elisabeth are trapped inside an eerie, symbiotic relationship. As long as Sue is indulging in hedonism's pleasures, Elisabeth digs herself into self-hatred and jealousy. And though they share a mind, they start to regard each other as enemies.

It is on just such a fateful night when, unwilling to turn back on, the tension between the two selves explodes. Elisabeth's body has aged precariously fast, as it suffers through the lack of the stabilizer fluid, and now it is more or less a grotesque shell of its former self.

About this elixir of youth, she searches for all the possible ways to sustain such a life, at whatever risk it entails for sending their shared existence tumbling down. As Elisabeth's original body deteriorates beyond repair, Sue has to confront some of the horrifying consequences of her addiction to the elixir of youth.

This vicious cycle of grotesque nightmare culminates into a blood-soaked climax of New Year's Eve telecast, where distinctions between identity, fame, and beauty blur. The viewers who were first enamored by Sue's perfection lash out violently upon being hit with the reality.

In one final desperate attempt to hold onto to her beauty and fame, Sue becomes more than just an old actress; she becomes a monster.

All this dissolves-in the last, absurd shot, into a puddle of blood on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, under which Elisabeth's once-besotted face gazes up at the night sky.

This is a really haunting story; more about the price we pay for chasing eternal youth and the extent to which we'll go to avoid the inevitable truth that our lives are aging. Do you believe that the trade-offs would be too severe? Would you risk everything, including your sense of self, for a chance to reclaim the past?