Demi Moore is Breathtaking in Body Horror Triumph ‘THE SUBSTANCE’

Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is staring down the barrel of her 50th birthday, and her Hollywood star has more than a few cracks—both literal and metaphorical. To make matters worse, the once-popular aerobics queen just overheard her sleazy, keyed-up boss (played with pure snake oil charm by Dennis Quaid) plotting her replacement. The network wants someone younger, fresher, tighter in spandex. Enter a shadowy black-market pharma company with a miracle drug, the titular Substance, promising to rewind crucial time on Elizabeth’s biological clock. The promise is…misleading. As she drinks down the sketchy elixir of youth, she doesn’t just regain her youthful glow—she begins to lose herself, piece by horrifying piece, to the younger version she thought she so badly wanted.

Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, who made a splash with her 2017 debut Revenge, The Substance finds Fargeat exploring the price of stardom in decidedly gruesome fashion. Moore is the perfect vessel for this descent, breathing new life into her long-dormant career with a jaw-dropping turn as Elizabeth Sparkle—a woman clinging desperately to relevance. Moore delivers a performance for the ages, blending tender pathos, righteous fury, and gleefully deranged body horror into a real showstopper of a role. Emotionally raw and physically demanding, she proves she’s still got it, long after Hollywood has seemed to forget. It’s worth noting the meta-irony here: Moore, at 61, plays a woman on the brink of 50—a subtle nod to the very obsession with youth the film skewers.

From Elizabeth emerges Sue (Margaret Qualley), the younger, hotter, tighter embodiment of aerobic superstardom. In her first audition for Elizabeth’s old role, Sue effortlessly out-sparkles the OG Sparkle. The twist? Sue and Elizabeth are two sides of the same coin. Sue is born from Elizabeth in a grotesque sequence that gives the Alien chestburster scene a serious run for its money. Quickly adjusting to her new form, Sue becomes entangled in a twisted time-share arrangement with her creator, one that inevitably escalates into a battle for control.

Sue is both a rebirth and a parasite. Elizabeth her unwitting host. As always, the offspring drains its predecessor, and the process accelerates as Sue fights to break free from the woman she still relies on to survive. Fargeat delivers jaw-dropping nods to the agonizing physical toll of sharing a life, with unsettling displays of the denuded female form enduring gut-wrenching body horror that could make even David Cronenberg blush.

On the surface, The Substance dissects the dark side of female celebrity, exploring the extreme lengths women in the spotlight go to preserve their ever-fading youth. But dig deeper, and there’s a scathing commentary on regretting motherhood—the bodily sacrifice handed down to ungrateful recipients, basking in the glow of youth, too self-absorbed to recognize the price paid to raise them. Not until they, too, begin to feel life’s inevitable decay. The cycle of self-absorbed offspring and aggrieved forebear repeats itself, unrelenting. As The Substance plunges into a blood-soaked third act, where the quest for eternal youth and beauty hits a grisly dead end, Fargeat lets the gore fly in a sequence that’s as jaw-dropping as it is darkly hilarious. The outrageous lengths she goes to are both astonishing and perfectly in tune with the film’s demented sense of humor, leaving this critic simultaneously shellshocked and hysterically laughing.

At its Cannes Film Festival debut, The Substance deservedly took home the award for Best Screenplay. Fargeat’s writing masterfully balances biting satire with a deeply unsettling character study. The escalating tension between Elizabeth and Sue is where the screenplay truly shines, particularly as Elizabeth’s physical deterioration worsens. It begins with a crooked witch-like finger, then greyed hair and cracking skin, before culminating in a final transformation that feels straight out of Kafka—evoking body horror classics like The Fly. Even as she unravels, Elizabeth stubbornly refuses to renegotiate her pact with Sue, driven by vanity and a desperate need to cling to youth at any cost. The tragic irony, of course, is that it’s not really Elizabeth who’s becoming young—it’s Sue, the new Sparkle, who is quite literally devouring her. This slow-burn horror, fueled by Elizabeth’s self-delusion and Sue’s growing hunger for independence, makes the screenplay a wickedly sharp commentary on the perils of vanity, the horrors of motherhood, and the lengths people will go to defy their own obsolescence.

The performances elevate The Substance into the upper echelon of this decade’s horror films, making it not only 2024’s best genre movie, but amongst my favorite films of the year thus far. Moore has never been better—perfectly cast and swinging for the fences in a role that should secure her a long-overdue Oscar nomination, if the Academy weren’t so notoriously biased against genre films. Margaret Qualley is equally magnetic, stealing every scene with effortless star power. Her physically commanding performance perfectly captures the bratty zeitgeist of today’s up-and-coming talent. Their combative chemistry and uneasy coexistence create a pitch black fairy tale that’s as dark and twisted as it is irresistibly captivating. The film’s blend of shocking body horror, grotesque absurdity, and biting satire makes for a journey that’s both deeply unsettling and wickedly funny—you can’t look away, even when you want to. The Substance is a grim and gooey triumph, the kind of film that leaves viewers questioning society’s obsession with youth and the terrifying (and sometimes hilarious) consequences of chasing it at any cost.

CONCLUSION: Coralie Fargeat returns to the horror genre to deliver one of 2024’s best films, ‘The Substance’. With a remarkable return-to-form performance from Demi Moore, a chilling turn by Margaret Qualley, and enough visceral body horror to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty fans, ‘The Substance’ is a substantive exercise in genre filmmaking that’ll cling to you long after the blood has dried.