140 min | R | September 20, 2024 | Mubi
Coralie Fargeat makes a body horror film about aging in Hollywood that goes further than anyone expects. Demi Moore gives the performance of her career. The last thirty minutes are insane.
Elisabeth Sparkle is a former Oscar-winning actress now hosting an aerobics show. She is fifty. Her producer fires her because she is too old. She discovers a black-market drug called the Substance that creates a younger, more perfect version of herself from her own cells. The younger version calls herself Sue. The rules are simple. They share one life. Seven days each. Maintain the balance. Do not deviate. Elisabeth deviates. The consequences are catastrophic. Coralie Fargeat builds a satire about the beauty industry that operates as body horror and does not flinch from either mode.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth with a vulnerability she has never shown on screen. The performance requires her to be naked and aging and humiliated and she commits to every moment. Moore understands this character because she has lived a version of this story. That authenticity is devastating. Margaret Qualley plays Sue with a youthful perfection that becomes monstrous. She is not a different person. She is Elisabeth’s self-hatred given a body. Dennis Quaid plays the producer Harvey with grotesque masculinity. His eating scenes alone are a horror film.
Fargeat directed Revenge and she brings the same maximalist approach to a bigger canvas. The film is visually stunning and deliberately nauseating. The color palette is hyper-saturated. The body horror uses practical effects that are spectacular and revolting. The Substance itself is rendered with clinical precision that makes every injection and every spinal tap feel real. The sound design amplifies every crack and squelch. Fargeat is not interested in subtlety. She is interested in making the audience feel what women feel when their bodies are treated as products with expiration dates.
The film is too long. The middle section repeats its points. But the final thirty minutes are some of the most audacious, disgusting, and cathartic filmmaking released this year. Fargeat takes the body horror to a place that is genuinely shocking and the practical effects team deserves every award available. This is a film about what Hollywood does to women’s bodies. It says it with blood and latex and fury.