The Substance: Do I Look Fat in This Movie? Demi Moore Kicks Ass in Body Horror Extravaganza

By Liz Braun

Rated: B+

Who better than women to tackle the body horror genre? Imagine how all that carefully taught, lifelong self-loathing would inform the filmmaking.

So, welcome The Substance — fresh off a TIFF People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award — as its gleeful gross-out message hits Canadian movie theatres this week.

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s comedy is an inspired send-up of the contemporary emphasis on youth and beauty. Visually, the film is on steroids, bursting with close-up colour and chaos and in-your-face-guts in the best possible way. The camera is licking its figurative lips throughout.

Demi Moore stars here as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading film star reduced to hosting a tame exercise program on TV. Her disgusting boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid, lit and shot here like a cheerful monster) is the ultimate sexist pig. Elisabeth is crushed to discover that Harvey wants someone younger to take over her TV show.

Not so fast. Elisabeth has heard about The Substance, some magic elixir that offers a younger, fresher version of oneself, and after much soul-searching, she decides to try it out.

Thereafter, in a scene that winks at (and perverts) everything from childbirth and Alien to maybe Athena bursting from Zeus’ forehead, Elisabeth creates an alternate version of herself: Sue.

Sue (Margaret Qualley, fearless and ferocious here) is the young, firm, fresh version of Elisabeth; she immediately auditions for Elisabeth’s old job. The men doing the hiring can’t take their eyes off Sue, and sure enough, she gets the gig. Hers is a new, sexy exercise show, all T & A and salivating close-ups of her perfect body.

Sue quickly becomes the new “It” girl. Elisabeth is initially thrilled to get a new lease on life.

The only caveat involved in using The Substance is that the women must swap places every seven days, without fail. The literature emphasizes that the two are still the same person. The mature version alternates her existence every week with the younger iteration. But that gets old soon.

Both women tire of the swap, Sue resenting having to pause her meteoric rise every week and Elisabeth appalled at how Sue's selfishness is literally sucking the life out of her.

Things begin to go south. There will be blood.

The Substance runs two hours and 20 minutes, but it never feels too long, and a patient viewer is rewarded with a completely bonkers final act.

The performances in The Substance are all terrific and Moore is particularly impressive. It's interesting how the casting mirrors the message: Moore drags behind her all the breathless tabloid speculation about what she’s had nipped, tucked or lifted in real life.

You could view Qualley as the younger, dewier version of her famous mother, Andie MacDowell, and then there’s Quaid, now 70, whose transition from screen heartthrob to thespian seems to have gone without a hitch. Does anyone question his looks?

The Substance is a smorgasbord of visual nods to the horror greats — Craven, Carpenter, and Cronenberg, for instance, among many others. Filmmaker Fargeat can make an egg-beater held aloft look as terrifying as the chainsaw in that particular Texas massacre, and for horror cognoscenti, the film is a treat to watch.

It’s a treat for every other viewer, too, at least for those with the stomach for it. Under all the laughs, The Substance has enough substance to leave you with important questions about ambition, competition and society’s focus on all that is skin-deep — why is beauty revered above intellect? When did Botox replace wisdom as a hallmark of age? And are those Margaret Qualley’s real breasts?

The Substance. Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. Starring Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, and Margaret Qualley. In theatres September 20.