For all the body horror in “The Substance,” the scariest place to be may be in the mind of Elisabeth (Demi Moore) as she prepares for a date, unsure of herself after decades of projecting confidence as a fitness instructor on television. It would seem to take a lot to lure her out of her lavish crib looking out over Hollywood from the hills and it isn’t surely isn’t to meaningfully reconnect with a 10th grade classmate she ran into a parking lot, but the feeling she gets from hearing him call her beautiful, though the words don’t sink in enough to eave her to wonder just how much makeup to put on.
Given the control Coralie Fargeat exerts over the image in her deliriously entertaining second feature, it isn’t necessarily getting older that appears to be the writer/director’s greatest fear, but the loss of autonomy, having previously set up a weekend getaway in her ferocious debut “Revenge” that turned into a nightmare for a young woman when two other thugs showed up to her boyfriend’s remote retreat. In “The Substance,” a car accident prevents Elisabeth from continuing on as the host of her exercise show, but the mind races as the body that once brought her fame now feels like a prison, remaining unbelievably taut by any reasonable standards, but now nowhere near her own. An assistant to her doctor slips in a USB drive touting an alternative therapy known as “The Substance” into her pocket as she leaves the clinic, and while Elisabeth isn’t immediately receptive, the idea starts to sound better when it doesn’t seem like there’s anything else she can do.
It’s generally best for the audience to think as little about the science behind the substance as its main character does, although Fargeat sets it up brilliantly visually in the film’s opening frame as some cellular duplication that creates a second self, younger and more vital. An injection leads Elisabeth to give birth to Sue (Margaret Qualley) from an unlikely canal and the two are instructed to alternate consciousness every seven days, provided with boxes from a shadowy organization full of sustenance like a meal plan from Jenny Craig. It’s never too clear what Elisabeth gets from the deal when none of the pleasure that Sue experiences in taking her place is transferred, except perhaps in retaining a hold on her legacy — Sue quickly assumes the vacant role of host on the TV show Elisabeth led for so long and makes ample use of the luxe bachelorette pad she owns.
However, as capable as Fargeat is of overwhelming you with her bold aesthetic choices in the heightened Hollywood she creates, the film’s central idea is even more powerful to overcome its fuzzy logic when Sue so readily adapts to how it all works, afforded entry by her youth and beauty and knowing how they can be wielded to get what she wants, while Elisabeth starts to disassociate, wanting to preserve a certain version of herself rather than feeling comfortable engaging with the world. Making this all the more potent is that the artificial becomes a manifestation of the psychological as the abstract influence of the male gaze is reflected in how both Elisabeth and Sue start to appear and aided along by the fact that Sue is apt to overstay her seven-day stints by hours at first and then days, putting her host’s health at risk, this arrangement can’t be expected to last.
After the bloody conclusion of “Revenge,” Fargeat can be counted on for a finale of horrific extravagance, but working in the Grand Guignol tradition, there are unexpected nuances in a film so bluntly effective, ironically exuding confidence in every way as it is drained from Elisabeth. The savvy casting of Moore, who brings all her iconography to the part along with the courage to lean into some of its campier demands, lays the foundation for the film to push in directions that can feel familiar at first but break through into wild new territory, and both Qualley and Dennis Quaid, as the sleazy, snakeskin-clad station manager who oversees the exercise show, are equally up to the task at hand. Old and new do gloriously coalesce in at least one respect when while Elisabeth’s own stab at reinvention may not take, the revival of ideas that have worked since the heyday of monster movies are freshly reconceived. Like the best of them, the fundamental human frailty can be seen underneath the skin of genre (and generally the copious prosthetics required), making the end title card for “The Substance” from such an obviously talented formal stylist as Fargeat, truly feel like a mic drop.
“The Substance” opens on September 20th in New York and Los Angeles.