The scariest moments in “The Substance” have nothing to do with blood and guts

When I walked into a local movie theater on New York’s Lower East Side to see “The Substance” last weekend, I did so in an uncharacteristic way, knowing hardly anything about the film before planting myself in a seat. I knew vaguely that it was a science fiction psychological thriller starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, and was pegged to the perennial relevance of the beauty industry (and society more broadly) selling women products designed to make them both acknowledge and feel bad about their age. What I did not know was that it was a body horror movie, a genre I find myself largely inexperienced with, despite my general affinity for spooky content. Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), a middle-aged former Hollywood aerobics star who has been ousted by her employer, a sleazeball-suited type named Harvey who Dennis Quaid plays a little too well. Feeling deflated about her languishing career — and for basically being called old parts by her boss — Elisabeth orders “The Substance,” a serum that enables her to “give birth” to the younger, hotter version of herself: Sue (Qualley.) The serum works wonders, but there’s a hyper-caveat. The user must remember their oneness with their new spawn and obey the weekly body swap, lest some seriously unwanted side effects occur. Before seeing “The Substance,” I considered myself to be generally thick-skinned about blood and guts. When it comes to the body horror aspect of it all, “The Substance” delivers on all fronts, from its heightened satire, squelching and crackling sound effects, and revved-up visuals. We hear cracking bones, see a pile of entrails, watch Sue suture Elisabeth’s back, and get an uncomfortable close-up of Harvey frenetically masticating beady-eyed shrimp. It’s all designed to make our stomachs roil, and it definitely does. While watching Sue’s back unzip as a guy she brought home undoes her snakeskin bodysuit, giving way to a cascading waterfall of bloody organs, I leaned over to my boyfriend between slitted fingers held in front of my eyes and said, “I don’t think I could ever be a surgeon.” And yet, for all of “The Substance”’s stomach-flipping, ear-plugging content, what left me the most affected by the film was the raw emotion it engendered. I found myself unable to hold back free-flowing tears when, in the movie’s third act, Elisabeth — now a decrepit and balding hunchback — pleads with Sue (whom she’s just tried to terminate) to regain consciousness. She begs her supple, pouty-lipped counterpart to come back to life — Sue is slated to host a New Year’s Eve live event. “Please,” Elisabeth pleads, telling Sue that she’s the only part of her that’s worth anything, that anyone cares about. And the soul-crushingly sad thing is, Fargeat intends to have us understand that Elisabeth’s observation is entirely spot on. All comes crashing into real-world focus when one considers Moore’s seemingly intentional casting. The “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “G.I. Jane” actor has been pilloried over the course of her decades-long career, specifically in regard to her body and cosmetic surgeries. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Much of Moore’s 2019 memoir, “Inside Out,” details the extreme measures she took during her peak days of stardom to maintain her physique. She experienced long bouts of disordered eating and exercised excessively in an effort to mold her body to industry standards. “I think there was a general sense about certain expectations, in particular coming out of the ’80s and the ’90s where there was a greater pressure for perfection,” Moore said in an interview with the New York Times published earlier this month. “If you look at any advertising, everything was very clean and perfect, and there wasn’t any body inclusivity. There was a more extreme standard of beauty that existed, and I did, as I wrote in the book, personally experience being told to lose weight on quite a few films before I ever even had my children. And again, those were humiliating experiences, but the true violence was what I was doing to myself, the way in which I tortured myself, did extreme crazy exercise, weighed and measured my food because I was putting all of my value of who I was into how my body was, how it looked, and giving other people’s opinion more power than myself.” The Substance (Courtesy of MUBI)The actor also told The Times that it wasn’t until after shooting for G.I. Jane wrapped that she finally experienced a “huge shift” and came to terms with how harsh beauty standards had actually impacted her. “… I had manipulated my body, I had changed it multiple times, through just pure force and discipline, and when I finished that film, I was so kind of worn down in this battle that I had been in that I finally surrendered,” Moore said. “And I feel like I just started to ask to be my natural size because I didn’t know what it was. I literally couldn’t go in a gym. I couldn’t control food in that way, and I really experienced the gift of surrender.” It’s a gross hyper-fixation with women’s bodies and what they do to alter them, a focus which lands ironically nine out of ten times given that many body modifications are done in an effort to combat age and physicality-related criticisms. When Elisabeth is effectively discarded by her boss, her fans, and society, The Substance — at first pass — seems like the hyperbolic answer. And yet, though “The Substance” trafficks in deep, deep absurdism (particularly its uber-grotesque ending with the decapitated, blood-spewing Elisasue), its huge success comes from its ability to force us to confront just how real all of its craziness is. In “The Substances”’s final moments, As Elisabeth’s blob of flesh comes to rest on her Hollywood Star, bathed in the warm glow of memories of her past fame, I was terrified. The sense of validation she clearly feels, evidenced by the serene smile on her face, after putting her body and mind through unimaginable turmoil is a relatable sentiment many if not most women will shudder at, long after they leave the theater.