‘The Substance’ or — Unoriginally Original?
It can be dangerous for a filmmaker to be too brazenly explicit with showing their movie influences as it increases the risk of creating a Frankenstein monster cobbled together from pre-existing elements. Writer/director Coralie Fargeat flirts perilously close to such territory with ‘The Substance’ (2024) because her references are legion and include everything from Cronenberg to Lynch, Aronofsky, Kubrick, early Peter Jackson, John Carpenter, Argento, Yuzna, Stuart Gordon, Cassavetes, Brian De Palma (a LOT of De Palma) and even ‘All About Eve’ (1950). Crikey, is there going to be any room left for even a speck of originality here?
The good news is Fargeat keeps her story deliberately straightforward, simple and fresh (Demi Moore desires to become young again so accepts an offer by a mysterious corporation that leads to terrible consequences) so it never feels as though all the readily identifiable elements — there’s the carpet from ‘The Shining (1980)!; isn’t that a scene from ‘Carrie’ (1976)? — needlessly overwhelm or intrude. Neither do they feel like a crutch with Fargeat’s central narrative robust, interesting and satirical enough to allow for certain cinematic indulgences purely to add a touch of zing.
Also, explicitly flagging up the territory we’re in — imagine Bette Davis’ Margo Channing in ‘Videodrome’ (1983) — allows Fargeat the room to deliver her story almost entirely through images with minimal dialogue. The result is a nicely crafted piece of visual story telling that doesn’t feel the need to explain every single aspect and trusts the viewer to fill in the gaps. For example — we discover nothing about the mysterious company providing Moore with her equipment or how that equipment might logically work, but that’s only because we don’t need to. We know what it represents, what it does and what the results are so let’s get on with the plot, so for a 2hr 20 min movie there’s maybe only twenty pages of actual dialogue, and the bulk of that goes to a delightfully hammy, anus-mouthed Dennis Quaid.
Space for visuals created, Fargeat and cinematographer Benjamin Kracun proceed to indulge in some seriously stimulating imagery, meticulous compositions, perfectly balanced colour schemes and hallucinogenic flourishes whilst in place of exposition we have information-carrying sound design, the muffled noise of liquid sloshing in the ear canal telling us more about what’s happening than any verbal explanation. Quite frankly, it’s a trip.
And even though the thrust of ‘The Substance’ is nothing terribly earth-shattering (the media demands eternal youth and female sexuality, the obsessive pursuit of both leading to destruction) it becomes more interesting when it delves into the areas of self-loathing, the fear of aging and how clinging onto what has passed creates resentment. It also dabbles in the universal human trait that our “moods do not know each other” and the self-sabotaging effects of self-pity so you don’t need to be a beautiful star on the cusp of losing her looks to empathise.
My only complaint is I felt the film could’ve cut to its closing credits twenty minutes or so before it did. Sure, it means losing that deliciously gonzo climax where ‘The Thing’ (1982) and ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ (1974) meets ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950) but we get the general idea before it happens. Still, after everything we’ve been through we kinda deserve that cathartic release of a blood-soaked orgy of fluids.
‘The Substance’ might not be perfect, and it certainly wears its influences a little too heavily on its sleeve, but this is still one hell of a movie that everyone involved, especially Demi Moore, can feel incredibly proud of.
